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JESUS      (4WARII    193:^^ 


AND    THE 


MEN    ABOUT    HIM 


CHARLES    F.   DOLE 


BOSTON 
Geo.  H.  Ellis,  141  Franklin  Street 


COPYRIGHT, 
BY   GEORGE    H.    ELLIS, 


To  the  men  and  women  everywhere  who  hope  for  a 
church  more  real,  more  broad,  more  noble  than  any  that 
now  exists,  this  little  book  is  offered,  with  the  purpose  of 
setting  forth  under  the  guise  of  familiar  types  of  character 
the  eternal  principles  which  make  religion  precious  to  the 
heart  of  man. 


PREFACE. 


There  is  constant  need  of  object  lessons  and 
parables,  even  for  the  most  thoughtful  minds,  in 
enforcing  moral  truths.  From  whatever  point  of 
view  we  consider  the  iigures  in  the  New  Testament 
story,  they  furnish  most  interesting  types  to  describe 
precisely  such  men  as  we  see  to-day.  Whatever, 
also,  any  one  thinks  of  certain  dogmatic  or  historical 
questions  about  Jesus,  there  is  practically  no  name 
or  word  so  clear  or  that  carries  such  wealth  of  mean- 
ing as  when  we  tell  men  of  the  Christ  life  and  the 
Christ  ideal.  The  characters  presented  in  the  follow- 
ing pages  are  here  used  purely  for  this  practical  or 
ideal  purpose,  as  so  many  pictures  or  object  lessons, 
to  make  truth  the  more  simple  and  beautiful.  The 
author,  indeed,  has  ceased  to  be  very  deeply  interested 
in  questions  of  mere  historical  criticism.  Larger  and 
more  important  subjects  demand  the  thought  of  the 
world.  Men  need  to  know  that  a  beneficent  God 
manifests  himself  in  human  life  now  no  less  than 
when  Jesus  walked  in  Galilee.  Men  need  to  have 
preached  to  them  what  Paul  used  to  say, —  that  "as 
many  as  are  led  by  the  Spirit  of  God  are  sons  of 
God."     Men's    faithlessness    is   not   concerning   the 


O  PREFACE 

past  or  about  matters  which  may  never  be  proved. 
Their  most  fatal  want  of  faith  touches  the  present. 
It  is  whether  this  world  is  so  truly  God's  world  that 
it  is  safe  and  only  safe  to  do  business,  to  treat  neigh- 
bors, and  to  manage  the  State  by  the  Golden  Rule. 
Men  wait  to  see  the  real  and  ever  new  miracles  of 
faith,  hope,  and  love.  Show  men  these  perfectly 
practicable  miracles,  already  worked  in  certain  divine 
lives,  worked  afresh  in  myriads  of  lives,  and  doubt 
and  fear  shall  flee  from  the  earth.  The  author  pro- 
foundly believes  in  this  kind  of  miracle  or  manifes- 
tation of  God.  He  would  be  very  glad  if  this  little 
book  might  help  any  one  else  thus  to  believe ; 
namely,  that  this  world,  here  and  now,  is  God's  world, 
in  which  it  is  therefore  well  for  the  man  who  follows 
wherever  Love  bids.  The  author's  thanks  are  espe-' 
cially  due  to  his  friend,  Mr.  George  S.  Merriam  of 
Springfield,  the  author  of  "  A  Living  Faith,"  who 
revised  the  manuscript,  and  encouraged  him  to  offer 
it  to  the  public. 


CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

I.    John  the  Baptist,  the  Ascetic, 9 

ir.      NiCODEMUS,   THE    PHARISEE, 24 

III.  NaTHANAEL,    THE    PURE    IN    HeART,        ....  38 

IV.  Peter  and  John  the  Disciples, 52 

V.    Jesus  the  Master, 68 


JOHN  THE  BAPTIST,  THE  ASCETIC. 

JERUSALEM  stands  on  hills  considerably  more 
than  two  thousand  feet  above  the  level  of  the 
Mediterranean.  The  valley  of  the  Dead  Sea  lies 
fourteen  hundred  feet  below  the  Mediterranean. 
From  the  gate  of  Jerusalem  to  the  valley,  in  fifteen 
miles,  you  descend  half  the  height  of  Mt.  Wash- 
ington. Here,  between  the  gardens  and  vineyards 
of  Jerusalem  and  the  deep,  gloomy  valley,  was 
the  wilderness  of  Judea,  with  bare  limestone  rocks 
and  caves  and  haunts  of  robbers,  a  forenoon's 
walk  out  of  the  city.  Among  the  valleys  of  this 
rough  district  were  occasional  little  oases,  where, 
about  a  spring  or  mountain  stream,  palm-trees 
grew.  The  fertile  spots  in  the  valleys  were  the 
home  of  communities  or  brotherhoods  of  pious 
men,  called  Essenes.  There  were,  perhaps,  never 
more  than  four  thousand  of  them  in  the  whole 
country,  some  of  whom  lived  in  the  towns.     But 


lO  JESUS    AND   THE    MEN    ABOUT    HIM 

their  singular  example  carried  a  weight  of  influ- 
ence beyond  their  numbers.  In  a  time  of  wars, 
when  every  man  was  a  fighter,  they  would  not  be 
soldiers,  or  even  manufacture  arms  and  weapons. 
When  human  slavery  was  generally  practised,  they 
would  have  no  slaves.  In  a  land  of  vineyards, 
they  would  drink  no  wine.  In  entering  the  order, 
one  promised  "that  he  would  honor  God,  practise 
righteousness  toward  men,  do  harm  to  no  man, 
either  of  his  own  accord  or  at  the  command  of 
others ;  that  he  would  always  hate  the  wicked  and 
assist  the  righteous ;  that  he  would  show  fidelity 
to  all  men,  especially  to  those  in  authority ;  also, 
to  love  the  truth  and  expose  liars,  to  keep  his 
hands  and  his  conscience  pure  from  unlawful 
gains."  Keeping  these  rules,  restraining  bodily 
passions  and  appetites,  bathing  their  bodies  in 
cold  water,  devoting  a  portion  of  each  day,  be- 
sides hard  work,  to  prayers,  psalms,  and  hymns, 
partaking  of  their  noon  and  evening  meal  to- 
gether, as  a  sort  of  communion  service,  they  be- 
lieved that  the  spirit  of  man  was  purified  and 
brought  close  to  the  mystery  of  the  divine  light, 
that  visions  and  prophetic  foresight  of  things  to 
come  might  be  looked  for,  or  that  the  art  of  heal- 
ing the  sick  could  be  learned. 


JOHN   THE   BAPTIST  II 

It  was  in  this  wilderness  of  Judea  that  the  re- 
markable person  appeared  whom  the  world  knows 
under  the  name  of  "John  the  Baptist,"  or,  better, 
"  the  Baptizer."  We  are  able  to  distinguish  but 
the  bare  outline  of  a  heroic  figure, —  "  the  voice 
of  one  crying  in  the  desert."  We  know  hardly 
anything  of  the  details  of  his  life.  If  his  father 
was  a  priest,  John  was  not  the  stuff  that  priests 
were  made  of.  The  precise  ceremonial  of  out- 
ward things,  the  slaughter  of  sheep  and  oxen,  the 
looking  after  the  tithes  and  the  offerings,  the  noisy 
feasting  multitudes,  the  gorgeous  temple,  crowded 
with  curiosity  seekers,  with  booths  and  tables  in 
the  great  spaces  where  men  bought  and  sold  and 
quarrelled,  the  endless  routine,  doing  things  as 
they  had  always  been  done,  keeping  the  old  relig- 
ious customs  intact  which  did  not  make  people 
either  holy  or  happy, —  this  life  of  a  priest  must 
have  revolted  many  an  earnest  soul.  You  may 
suppose  John  some  day  to  have  met  a  kinsman 
from  one  of  the  Essenes'  villages.  "  Come  with 
us,"  the  older  man  says  to  the  younger.  "You 
were  not  meant  by  God  for  a  priest,  to  superin- 
tend the  butchery  of  cattle,  to  wring  the  tithes 
from  the  poor.  This  town  life  is  a  sham.  Come 
with  us,  then,  and  try  our  simple  life, —  pure  air, 


12  JESUS   AND   THE  MEN   ABOUT   HIM 

clear  running  water,  the  fruit  of  the  earth,  honey 
from  the  bees,  with  the  company  of  good  men,  with 
worship  and  the  intercourse  with  the  Almighty." 
John  was  the  man  to  hear  such  kind  of  appeal. 
At  any  rate,  he  went  to  live  in  the  desert  where 
the  Essenes  were.  He  doubtless  went  in  and  out 
of  their  villages,  knew  their  manner  of  life,  and 
practised  their  rigid  morals. 

Why  did  not  John  stay  with  the  Essenes  and 
become  one  of  them  ?  The  Essenes  were  pure 
and  harmless  people,  but  they  had  no  mission  to 
be  helpers  and  saviors.  On  the  contrary,  they 
feared  to  endanger  their  own  purity  by  mixing 
with  men  and  going  into  crowds.  You  may  liken 
them  to  the  early  Puritans  who  came  to  this  coun- 
try. They  did  not  want  the  wicked  world  to  fol- 
low them  here.  They  wanted  to  keep  pure  by 
themselves.  Their  mission  was  merely  to  live. 
They  had  their  own  souls  to  save.  They  were  not 
here  to  help  others  to  live ;  and  tho  they  were 
humane,  strict,  and  devout,  and  tho  they  loved 
one  another  within  the  brotherhood,  they  had  no 
kindling  and  missionary  love  for  mankind. 

Now,  no  eager,  passionate,  large  nature  could 
have  been  content  to  stay  with  the  Essenes. 
These  Essenes'  communities  had  existed  for  gen- 


JOHN    THE   BAPTIST  T3 

erations, —  virtuous,  serene,  religious, —  but  the 
world  did  not  seem  to  be  growing  any  better  for 
them.  All  that  they  did  was  to  keep  things  as 
they  were,  being  as  conservative  as  the  priests  in 
the  temple.  No  reformation  came  from  them. 
On  the  contrary,  they  carried  off  into  the  desert 
the  very  men  needed  in  towns  and  cities  to  build 
up  a  more  virtuous  and  religious  town  life.  Sup- 
pose John  saw  this :  it  was  obvious  that  there  was 
no  room  for  many  people  to  become  Essenes, 
even  if  that  life  had  been  able  to  satisfy  ever 
one.  Besides,  the  circumstances  of  the  times 
brought  pressing  need  of  more  than  the  Essenes 
were  doing. 

John's  age  was  not  only  the  most  memorable 
in  history,  but,  what  is  rare,  men  suspected  that 
it  was  memorable.  It  was  memorable  compared 
with  anything  that  had  gone  before,  for  its  riches, 
splendor  and  luxury,  the  bustle  and  din  of  wide 
commerce.  The  boy  John  had  watched  the  mer- 
chants' caravans  climbing  the  hills.  He  had 
looked  on  at  the  building  of  palaces  and  castles. 
He  had  most  likely  seen  the  great  race-course  at 
Jericho,  where  heathen  games  were  played.  He 
had  been  shocked  at  the  new  theatre  within  the 
holy  city.     He  had  wondered  at  the  massive  mar- 


14  JESUS   AND   THE   MEN   ABOUT   HIM 

ble  buildings  of  the  temple.  He  had  heard  as  a 
boy  of  the  great  doings  and  the  unlimited  ex- 
penses of  the  Herods,  who  had  girdled  the  land 
with  forts,  and  built  new  cities  with  foreign  names, 
and  filled  them  with  foreign  people. 

The  times  were  memorable,  too,  for  vice  and 
oppression.  The  terrible  Herod  the  Great  had 
died,  perhaps  in  the  year  in  which  John  was  born. 
The  tales  of  his  grinding  taxes,  of  the  murder  of 
his  own  sons,  of  men  and  women  spirited  away 
from  their  homes  to  his  palaces  and  dungeons, 
were  in  every  one's  mouth.  No  one  knew  where 
his  spies  and  informers  were  not.  The  new  brood 
of  Herods  had  come,  if  possible,  smaller  and 
meaner.  Over  all  stood  the  dreaded  power  of 
Rome.  Even  in  the  temple  halls  the  eagles  of 
Rome  had  been  suspended.  Roman  legions  were 
seen  from  time  to  time  marching  up  to  Jerusalem 
or  across  the  land  to  guard  the  borders  of  the 
empire  against  the  Parthians.  Unscrupulous  Ro- 
man governors  made  themselves  rich,  and  rich 
provinces  poor.  Altogether,  it  seemed  as  if  the 
world  grew  worse.  Vices  and  foreign  customs 
spread :  it  seemed  as  if  people  had  never  suffered 
more  unbearable  evils. 

Along  with  all  this,  there  was  a  wonderful  ex- 


JOHN    THE   BAPTIST  1 5 

pectation  of  coming  change.  It  was  not  in  Judea 
alone.  Men  are  said  to  have  talked  of  it  in  Egypt 
and  at  Rome.  The  present  age  was  hurrying  on, 
men  said,  to  its  close.  This  vague  sense  of  com- 
ing change,  this  prevalent  discontent  and  popular 
unhappiness,  predisposed  men  to  religion.  All 
manner  of  superstitions  were  credited.  There 
seems  to  have  been  a  revival  of  what  we  to-day 
call  Spiritualism, —  a  readiness  to  believe  in  appa- 
ritions and  the  manifestations  of  the  supernatural. 
In  Rome  there  was  a  strange  interest  in  occult 
things  and  Oriental  religions.  Palestine  was  full 
of  people  supposed  to  be  possessed  with  demons. 
Men  both  feared  spirits  and  were  prepared  to  see 
them  in  the  dusk  of  the  night,  as  in  the  rumor 
after  the  crucifixion  of  Jesus  that  many  spirits  of 
the  dead  appeared  to  people  in  the  city.  Alto- 
gether, there  was  a  strange  sensitiveness,  uneasi- 
ness, and  restlessness  of  the  popular  mind,  ill  at 
ease  with  the  world  as  it  was,  in  hope  and  fear  of 
what  might  soon  be, —  the  fated  end  of  the  world 
or  the  golden  age  and  the  kingdom  cf  God. 
There  had  been  growing  among  the  Hebrews  for 
centuries  a  prophetic  hope,  like  what  the  slaves 
at  the  South  are  said  to  have  had.  ''Some 
time  yet,"  true  men  had  said,  "the  eternal  laws 


l6  JESUS   AND   THE   MEN   ABOUT    HIM 

will  vindicate  themselves " ;  as  we  say  to-day 
even  more  surely  when  we  add,  "That  which 
ought  to  be  must  be." 

In  the  midst  of  these  anxieties,  rumors,  antici- 
pations, dread,  the  word  went  up  to  the  capital 
that  a  strange  man  was  just  out  of  the  city  in 
the  wilderness,  preaching  the  kingdom  of  God. 
People  did  not  know  who  he  was.  They  described 
him  by  his  dress  and  appearance, —  his  leathern 
girdle  and  camel's  hair  shirt,  with  the  face  and 
clothing  of  a  hermit,  whose  meagre  fare  was  what- 
ever came  to  hand,  honey  or  locusts.  People 
went  in  crowds  to  see  him.  We  should  have  gone 
if  we  had  been  in  Jerusalem. 

John's  word  was  perfectly  simple, —  "  The  king- 
dom of  God  is  at  hand."  What  possessed  him  to 
believe  so  ?  Little  did  he  reck  of  the  centuries 
of  blood  that  have  come  and  gone,  from  his  time 
till  now.  Nevertheless,  he  said  what  was  true. 
A  new  faith,  a  new  spirit,  a  new  and  higher  order 
of  men  were  about  to  appear.  John  only  dimly 
apprehended  what  he  meant  when  he  said,  "  Lo, 
the  kingdom  of  God,"  as  the  heart  of  3^outh  in  all 
ages  but  vaguely  knows  what  it  looks  forward  to. 

What  sort  of  sermons  did  John  preach.?  They 
were  what  we  call  almost  strictly  moral  sermons. 


JOHN   THE   BAPTIST  I  7 

There  were  soldiers  on  the  march  who  came  to 
hear  him.  He  did  not  tell  them  to  stop  being 
soldiers,  as  the  Essenes  would  have  said,  but  to 
stop  their  pillage  and  be  content  with  their  pay. 
He  did  not  tell  men  to  leave  their  homes  and  live 
in  the  desert  as  he  did,  but,  staying  where  they 
were,  to  share  their  food  and  their  extra  garments 
with  those  who  had  none.  He  did  not  tell  the 
publicans,  as  you  would  have  supposed,  to  give 
up  collecting  taxes  for  Herod,  but  he  bade  them 
to  stop  extorting  more  than  was  due.  He  broke 
out,  however,  in  indignation  against  the  money- 
loving  citizens  of  Jerusalem,  the  priests  and  Phar- 
isees, the  men  of  good  families,  and  called  them 
"the  breed  of  vipers."  It  was  because  he  had  na 
confidence  in  their  sincerity.  But  he  did  not  bio 
them  to  forsake  all  and  follow  him,  as  Jesus 
bade  certain  men  to  do :  he  only  said,  "  Repent, 
and  show  that  you  have  repented  by  what  you 
do."  There  was  a  motive  of  fear  behind  this 
preaching.  The  new  kingdom  of  God  would 
make  short  work  of  the  sinners.  It  was  as  tho 
the  just  king  were  expected  to  come  suddenly  to 
assume  his  throne.  He  would  banish  and  de- 
stroy the  wicked  people  out  of  the  land.  No  one 
then  thought  of  any  other  way  of  disposing  of 


l8  JESUS   AND   THE   MEN   ABOUT   HIM 

them.  Bad  men,  hearing  such  preaching,  trem- 
bled to  think  what  would  happen  to  them  if  they 
were  caught  in  their  sins.  Altogether,  it  was 
healthy  preaching,  tho  without  any  fine  spiritual 
uplift.  It  was  adapted  to  a  sensual  and  supersti- 
tious people,  like  the  sermons  of  certain  noted 
revivalists,  who  make  bad,  dishonest,  greedy  peo- 
ple thoroughly  frightened.  There  need  be  no  fear 
that  such  people  will  be  frightened  too  much. 

The  only  form  or  ceremony  which  John  pre- 
scribed or  used  was  baptism.  The  people  were 
accustomed  to  frequent  ceremonial  washings. 
The  Essenes  appeared  to  have  baptized  them- 
selves religiously  every  day.  John  was  simpler. 
He  said,  almost  in  so  many  words.  Why  baptize 
yourselves  over  and  over  ?  Be  baptized  once  for 
all.  Be  clean,  and  then  stop  doing  the  things  that 
make  you  unclean.  If  John  had  used  any  words 
or  formula  of  baptism,  it  would  have  been  such  a 
formula  as  this:  "I  baptize  you  in  token  of  re- 
nouncing your  sins,  and  of  the  kingdom  of  God." 
Here  at  the  Jordan  Jesus  came  to  take  this 
baptism.  He  must  have  been  one  of  those  pow- 
erfully moved  by  the  preaching  of  John.  He 
most  likely  found  his  disciples  among  those  who 
had  listened  to  John.     Everywhere,  people  were 


JOHN   THE   BAPTIST  1 9 

set  to  thinking  and  reading  the  old  scriptures. 
There  was  a  lifting  of  the  moral  standards. 
When  Jesus  should  begin  to  preach,  people  would 
be  eager  to  hear  more. 

John's  preaching,  however,  left  a  great  blank. 
After  you  had  repented  of  your  sins,  what  then  ? 
After  you  had  given  away  your  surplus  of  food 
and  your  spare  cloak,  there  would  be  a  reaction. 
The  kingdom  of  God  had  not  yet  come.  You 
merely  waited  till  it  should  appear.  Meantime, 
life  was  hard  as  before ;  meantime,  temptations 
abounded  to  do  as  others  did.  It  was  not  evi- 
dently God's  world  yet.  How  could  you  be  con- 
tent before  God's  world  should  come,  while  it 
still  seemed  mostly  the  devil's  world  ? 

John's  own  character  and  example  illustrated 
the  difficulty.  He  did  not  even  come  into  the 
abodes  of  men  himself,  but  they  had  to  go  out 
to  him.  He  dressed  like  a  fugitive ;  he  lived  an 
unnatural  life.  Men  admired  him,  but  few  could 
imitate  such  a  life.  It  was  forbidding  to  most 
men.  Besides,  tho  strict,  noble,  and  fearless,  John 
lacks  warmth  and  breadth  of  nature.  He  seems 
a  man  who  expects  God,  not  a  man  who  has 
found  God.  It  is  not  God's  world  yet  that  he 
lives  in,  but  he  waits  for  God's  world  to  come. 


20  JESUS   AND   THE   MEN   ABOUT   HIM 

"There  is  a  gospel,"  he  says,  but  he  is  not  able 
to  tell  you  what  it  is.  This  does  not  constitute 
a  gospel.  Men  will  soon  be  tired  of  hearing  it. 
It  will  keep  John's  stern  face  to  the  front,  but  it 
makes  no  sunshine  in  his  face.  This  is  the  char- 
acter of  the  ascetic  temperament  always.  The 
ascetics  tell  you  how  you  can  contrive  to  get  an 
exceptional  vision  of  God.  They  have  their  cere- 
monial or  their  austere  manner  of  life,  which,  if 
you  will  enter  upon,  will  possibly  let  an  occa- 
sional sight  of  God  into  your  soul.  But  God  does 
not  habitually  belong  in  their  world.  God's  light 
does  not  naturally  shine  upon  them.  You  must 
go  out  of  the  world  to  find  God.  The  real  king- 
dom of  God  has  not  yet  come ;  but  you  may 
make  shift  as  you  can,  while  you  wait  for  it.  As 
for  common  people  who  live  ordinary  lives  and 
do  nothing  exceptional,  there  is  no  immediate 
gospel  for  them  in  this  world.  Their  gospel  is 
yet  to  come. 

It  is  some  faint  survival  of  this  ascetic  idea 
that  we  still  see  in  the  thought  that  a  church  is 
holy  ground,  apart  from  the  world  at  large,  which 
does  not  yet  belong  to  God.  In  church  you  may 
find  God  exceptionally,  as  you  do  not  find  him 
elsewhere.     It  is  the  same  faint  survival  of  the 


JOHN   THE  BAPTIST  21 

old  asceticism  that  preserves  Lent.  Here  is  a 
little  period  when  you  go  out  of  the  world  and 
retire  to  the  desert  to  hear  John  preach  the  doc- 
trine of  repentance.  You  fast  and  live  excep- 
tionally, and  you  may  catch  sight  of  God,  who 
does  not  yet  belong  in  the  whole  horizon  of  your 
life.  The  kingdom  of  God  still  waits.  Whereas 
the  only  true  gospel  that  fills  a  man's  soul  is  that 
of  one  who  can  say:  "  Lo !  the  kingdom  of  God 
is  here.  It  is  within  you.  This  life  is  God's. 
Now  are  ye  the  sons  of  God.  Live  then  here  and 
every  day,  not  in  Lent  alone,  not  in  the  desert, 
but  in  every  place,  as  the  child  of  God."  The 
ascetic  John  did  not  see  that.  The  ascetic  spirit 
never  sees  it.  Therefore,  the  reformation  of  John 
could  not  live,  much  less  create  a  religion. 

John's  end  is  very  pathetic.  Close  to  one  of 
the  pools  on  the  Jordan,  where  John  was  wont  to 
baptize,  they  say,  rose  a  palace  of  the  mean  and 
low-lived  Herod,  John's  opposite  in  character, 
station,  and  method  of  life.  He  had  put  away 
his  wife,  the  daughter  of  a  king,  to  take  the  wife 
of  his  brother.  John  called  sin  by  its  shortest 
name.  Word  was  brought  the  king  that  this 
intrepid  prophet  dared  to  denounce  him  in  the 
presence  of  the  populace,  with  whom  already  he 


22  JESUS   AND   THE   MEN   ABOUT   HIM 

was  sufficiently  unpopular.  The  king  swooped 
down  from  his  fortress,  and  bore  John  away  to 
the  frontier  castle  of  Machagrus  beyond  the  Dead 
Sea.  Rumor  was  that  even  Herod  did  not  dare 
at  first  to  put  John  to  death,  but  let  his  disciples 
come  and  go  to  visit  him  in  prison.  It  was  from 
here  that  he  sent  men  to  learn  of  Jesus,  "Art 
thou  he  that  should  come  ? "  But  the  wicked 
woman  could  not  forgive  John  for  attacking  her. 
Every  one  remembers  the  story  of  the  revel  in 
the  castle,  the  graceful  dancing  girl,  and  Herod's 
insane  promise,  and  the  executioner  despatched 
to  John's  solitary  cell.  Where  now  was  the  com- 
ing kingdom  of  God  that  this  faithful  man  had 
proclaimed  ?  Where  now  was  the  righteous  God 
who  ruled  the  earth  ?  Did  the  prophet  despair, 
or  doubt  the  fact  of  righteousness  ?  Did  his 
faith  die  at  last,  as  the  light  of  this  world  was 
cut  off  ?  No :  that  was  never  the  manner  of 
tlie  prophets.  They  were  in  the  hands  of  God. 
Should  the  soldier  despair  of  his  cause,  because 
his  turn  came  to  die  ?  No :  the  Almighty  reigned. 
The  kingdom  which  had  not  come  would  yet  come 
to  the  longing  eyes  of  men. 

It  is  the  fashion  nowadays  to  laugh  at  the  folly 
of  the  ascetic  life.     Let  those  who  laugh  at  it  be 


JOHN    THE   BAPTIST  23 

sure  that  they  have  something  nobler.  Who  now 
cares  for  Herod,  whom  GaUlee  looked  up  to  and 
feared  ?  The  man  who  tried  to  live  for  himself 
did  the  world  nothing  but  harm,  whereas  the  man 
who  lived  for  God  still  lives  in  his  pure  influ- 
ence over  every  soul  of  Christendom.  John's  life, 
which  seemed  to  fail,  succeeded.  He  won  a  place 
among  the  great  names  of  history.  He  bore  a 
part  in  bringing  in  the  reign  of  justice  and  peace 
among  men.  He  serves  God  yet  as  a  pure  and 
brave  memory  in  the  souls  of  men. 


II. 

NICODEMUS,  THE  PHARISEE. 

npHE  story  is  that  Jesus  had  come  up  to  Jeru- 
^  salem  to  the  Passover  feast.  In  some  poor 
and  cheap  part  of  the  city,  such  as  the  lower  class 
of  pilgrims  frequented,  in  a  little,  bare,  upper 
chamber,  you  may  think  of  him  as  receiving  oc- 
casional guests.  Here  occurs  the  perfectly  dra- 
matic picture  of  an  interview  between  the  peasant 
rabbi  from  Galilee  and  Nicodemus,  a  member 
of  the  Jewish  Sanhedrim,  or  senate  of  seventy. 
The  Jewish  senator,  leaving  his  spacious  house, 
his  face  muffled,  with  perhaps  a  single  slave  in 
attendance,  threading  the  dark,  narrow  streets, 
the  Passover  moon  filtering  its  light  from  above 
into  the  crevices  of  the  city,  knocks  at  last  at  the 
humble  house,  and  inquires  in  low  tones  for  a 
certain  Jesus  lodging  there.  He  is  shown  up  into 
the  low  room,  possibly  crowded  already  with 
Jesus'   poor  countrymen   and   disciples.      There 


NICODEMUS  25 

this  Pharisee  of  rank  stands  in  his  fine  robes  and 
broad  phylacteries,  with  inquisitive,  intellectual 
face,  to  study  the  strange  new  prophet,  whose 
truth-loving  eyes  in  turn  penetrate  his  visitor  and 
read  his  character.  A  cheap  lamp,  such  as  they 
furnish  in  lodging-houses,  burns  dimly  as  these 
two  representative  men  talk  together  into  the 
night;  and  the  disciples,  tired  of  hearing,  fall 
asleep,  stretched  on  the  floor.  So  much  for  the 
picture. 

The  Pharisees,  to  whom  Nicodemus  belonged, 
were  the  religious  leaders  of  the  time,  as  their 
name  probably  suggests.  They  were  the  Puritans 
among  the  Hebrews.  They  aimed  to  maintain 
and  teach  the  holy  law.  They  even  went  beyond 
the  law,  holding  that  there  was  a  considerable 
body  of  teaching  that  had  come  down  by  tradi- 
tion from  Moses.  This  traditional  law  partly  ex- 
plained and  partly  re-enforced  the  written  laws. 
You  may  roughly  liken  it  to  the  English  common 
law,  which  grows  out  of  and  depends  upon  the 
rulings  of  the  courts.  So  the  Pharisees  counted 
as  sacred  whatever  they  had  inherited  from  an 
older  time,  till  they  had  accumulated  a  mass  of 
rules  touching  every  part  of  their  lives, —  about 
food  and  drink,  about  marriage,  about  the  Sab- 


26  JESUS    AND    THE    MEN   ABOUT    HIM 

bath  and  what  could  or  could  not  be  done  upon 
it,  about  the  tithing  of  anise  and  pepper-corns, 
about   washings   and   the   purification   of  dishes. 

The  Pharisees  also  taught  a  strict  and  benevo- 
lent morality  :  "  Let  thine  house  stand  open  in 
the  streets,  and  let  the  poor  be  the  children  of 
thy  house."  "  Speak  little,  do  much,  and  receive 
all  men  with  a  friendly  countenance."  "  Judge 
every  man  according  to  the  scale  of  justice." 
"Judge  not  thy  neighbor,  till  thou  standest  in  his 
place."  "  Count  thyself  with  the  oppressed  and 
not  with  the  oppressors."  "  Listen  to  reviling 
words,  and  answer  not  again."  "  Do  all  from  the 
love  of  God."  And,  summing  up  the  law,  "  Do 
nothing  to  thy  neighbor  which  is  hateful  to  thy- 
self." The  Pharisees  were  strenuous  believers 
in  the  doctrines  of  future  rewards  and  punish- 
ments, and  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  being 
opposed  to  the  materialistic  tendency  of  the 
times,  and  of  the  richer  party  of  Sadducees. 

The  Pharisees  were  not  men  who  professed 
the  law,  but  were  unwilling  or  afraid  to  do  what 
the  law  bade.  On  the  contrary,  they  were  pa- 
triots and  martyrs.  When,  not  long  after  Jesus' 
death,  an  attempt  was  made  to  put  up  a  heathen 
image  in  the  temple,  thousands  of  people  threw 


NICODEMUS  27 

themselves  before  the  governor,  and  cried,  "We 
are  willing  to  die."  The  war  that  led  to  the 
destruction  of  Jerusalem  was  essentially  a  relig- 
ious war,  which  the  Jews  might  have  escaped  if 
they  had  not  been  willing  to  die  for  what  they 
held  to  be  right.  Such  was  the  characteristic  tem- 
per of  the  Pharisees,  who  constituted  and  guided 
public  opinion  for  three  hundred  years.  Not 
very  numerous,  forming  an  exclusive  society  of 
almost  six  thousand  men,  to  which,  however,  the 
poorest  Hebrew  citizen  might  have  access  by 
fulfilling  its  strict  conditions,  the  Pharisees  were 
everywhere  looked  up  to.  They  numbered  among 
themselves,  if  not  the  most  wealth,  the  best 
families  in  the  land.  In  the  synagogues  of  the 
country  towns  you  would  have  seen  their  devout 
women  among  the  most  regular  attendants  and 
trustworthy  supporters.  The  chief  teachers  were 
Pharisees,  such  as  the  renowned  Hillel,  whom 
Jesus  may  have  seen  when  he  came  up  as  a  boy 
to  the  temple,  and  his  famous  grandson,  Gamaliel, 
Paul's  teacher,  perhaps  the  greatest  man  of  Jesus' 
contemporaries.  Paul  himself  was  of  a  Pharisee 
family.  Jesus  was  undoubtedly  educated  by 
Pharisee  teachings  in  the  synagogue  at  Nazareth. 
Nicodemus   is   an   excellent   specimen   of    his 


28  JESUS  AND   THE   MEN   ABOUT   HIM 

order.  The  common  fashion  of  belittling  his 
character  is  not  warranted  by  the  story,  which 
makes  him  appear  a  rather  superior  man.  How 
many  of  the  upper  class,  deacons  of  rich  churches 
with  reputations  to  be  talked  about,  or  doctors  of 
divinity,  graduates  of  the  university,  can  we 
count,  who  would  go  out  of  their  way  to  look  up 
an  unlearned  and  humble  teacher?  How  many 
well-to-do  people  are  we  sure  of,  who  would  rec- 
ognize Jesus  if  he  were  to  appear  to-day  ?  But 
Nicodemus  skulked  to  Jesus'  lodging  under  cover 
of  night,  some  one  says.  How  many,  we  ask, 
would  have  ventured  to  go  at  all,  while  as  yet 
the  rest  of  his  very  respectable  party  looked  upon 
Jesus  with  extreme  suspicion,  when  he  was  not 
an  authorized  teacher,  when  evil  rumors  came 
that  he  broke  the  laws  and  disregarded  the  Sab- 
bath and  consorted  with  low  people  ?  The  story 
later  on  gives  two  further  very  creditable  glimpses 
of  Nicodemus.  One  is  in  the  presence  of  the 
full  Sanhedrim.  They  were  excitedly  discussing 
the  dangerous  and  radical  tendencies  of  Jesus' 
life  and  teachings.  They  honestly  thought  that 
Jesus  was  imperilling  existing  institutions.  They 
had  sent  men  to  arrest  him,  who,  being  im- 
pressed with  his  teaching  and  the  hold  that  he 


NICODEMUS  29 

had  upon  the  people,  returned  without  him.  Then 
Nicodemus  is  said  to  have  risen  to  demand  justice 
for  Jesus,  reminding  his  angry  associates  that 
their  law  condemned  no  man  without  a  hearing. 
Now,  not  one  man  out  of  ten  has  either  the  self- 
possession  or  the  courage  to  stand  thus  alone 
against  the  crowd,  not  of  another  class,  but  the 
best  men  of  his  own  class.  The  example  of  the 
American  Congress,  or  any  political  convention, 
witnesses  to  this. 

Once  more,  after  the  crucifixion,  when  most  of 
the  chosen  disciples  had  run  away,  Nicodemus 
appears  as  one  of  the  few  who  brought  ointments, 
a  hundred  pounds'  weight, —  a  very  generous  and 
costly  gift.  He  came  himself,  the  story  goes : 
other  rich  men  would  have  been  content,  if  they 
did  anything,  to  send  their  servants.  Of  course, 
such  a  man  never  voted  for  the  crucifixion.  Per- 
haps he  would  not  be  present  where  it  seemed 
useless  to  raise  his  voice  against  the  mad  ma- 
jority. 

We  have  said  enough  to  show  that  Nicodemus's 
character,  if  not  of  the  highest  type,  was  unusually 
high.  We  take  him  to  represent  nearly  the  best 
moral  material  that  you  see  anywhere.  His  was 
a  candid  and  truth-loving  mind,  willing   to    see 


30  JESUS    AND   THE    MEN    ABOUT    HIM 

both  sides  of  a  question, —  not  a  common  thing 
in  this  world.  He  was  not  blindly  prejudiced  by 
the  traditions  of  his  order.  As  men  go,  he  was 
remarkably  appreciative, —  a  man  of  ideals,  in- 
terested in  the  loftiest  subjects,  eager  for  relig- 
ious illumination  from  any  genuine  source.  You 
would  have  trusted  Nicodemus  as  a  fair  judge 
and  an  honorable  citizen.  You  would  never  have 
appealed  in  vain  for  the  poor,  for  the  support  of 
the  temple,  for  a  subscription  to  help  the  Jews  in 
Rome  to  build  their  new  synagogue.  We  should 
be  proud  to  have  the  like  of  Nicodemus,  so  ear- 
nest and  cultured,  come  to  live  in  our  street,  and 
glad  to  hear  that  so  reputable  and  religious  a 
man  had  taken  seats  in  our  church.  We  should 
like  to  have  all  the  men  in  a  Christian  church  as 
honest,  trustworthy,  conscientious,  and  benevo- 
lent as  this  Pharisee  is  represented  to  have  been. 
Nicodemus  stands  as  the  representative  of  the 
best  that  the  Pharisees  could  produce.  Why  was 
it  not  enough .''  Give  us  a  world  of  men  as  con- 
scientious, earnest,  and  religious-minded  as  Nico- 
demus,—  why  would  not  this  be  a  good  enough 
world  for  any  one  ?  Level  men  up  to  Nicodemus's 
standard,  and  what  is  the  use  trying  in  this  life  to 
level  men  any  higher  ?     Wherein,  then,  do  we  find 


NICODEMUS  31 

Nicodemus  unsatisfactory  to  our  moral  sense? 
"  You  must  be  born  again,"  or  from  above,  says 
Jesus,  as  tho  he  had  said,  "  You  have  not  begun 
yet  to  live."  What  is  this  lack  in  Nicodemus,  that 
when  we  met  him  on  the  street,  upon  the  level  of 
common  men,  we  had  not  felt,  but  which  in  the 
presence  of  Jesus  we  vaguely  recognize  ?  Nico- 
demus's  lack  was  precisely  what  Jesus  intimated 
He  had  plenty  of  moral  and  spiritual  capacity. 
He  wanted  moral  and  spiritual  life.  It  is  as 
when  you  see  a  fine  log  of  oak.  The  log  is 
splendid  material  for  warmth  and  heat,  but  it 
needs  the  kindling  touch  of  the  fire.  This  is 
what  Nicodemus  did  not  possess.  He  neither 
blazed  himself,  nor  was  it  in  him  to  make  any  one 
else  blaze.  The  man  of  the  Pharisee  type  is 
cold  and  cautious,  even  in  his  charitable  duties. 
You  cannot  make  a  fire  with  a  single  log  or 
coal,  tho  of  the  best.  It  will  not  ignite.  You 
must  put  logs  and  coals  together.  So  with  men. 
There  is  a  certain  close  contact  of  man  with  his 
brother  man  that  we  call  "the  sense  of  human- 
ity." Men  as  individuals  will  not  ignite.  You 
must  bring  them  into  a  certain  kind  of  sympa- 
thetic relation  together.  Nicodemus  stood  out- 
side of  this  new  relation  of  brotherly  humanity. 


32  JESUS   AND   THE   MEN  ABOUT   HIM 

It  is  possible  to  give  alms  to  the  poor  without 
touching  the  hands  of  the  poor,  like  the  prince 
who  tosses  coins  to  the  crowd  from  his  carriage. 
It  is  possible  to  do  public  service  in  such  a  spirit, 
as  tho  you  were  only  serving  yourself,  without 
feeling  the  popular  pulse.  We  send  such  men  to 
our  legislatures  and  to  Congress,  who  perform 
their  public  service  with  no  sense  of  a  common 
humanity  thrilling  them  and  commanding  alle- 
giance. Nicodemus  was  the  best  of  that  kind  of 
men. 

Another  thing.  You  must  have  the  free  air 
draw  through  your  pile  of  logs  to  make  a  fire. 
That  is,  you  must  be  disposed,  in  that  relation  of 
utter  willingness  and  obedience,  to  let  the  divine 
will  do  what  it  may  with  you.  What  you  are  here 
for  is  to  give  heat  and  light.  Let  the  air  come, 
then,  to  the  wood.  Let  the  wood,  being  here  on 
purpose  to  blaze,  catch  the  flame  and  be  fanned 
with  the  wind.  But  the  Pharisee  had  covered  his 
life  over  as  with  ashes,  with  deadening  rites,  con- 
ventions, observances,  and  rules,  till  you  could 
hardly  get  at  the  real  man  with  a  breath  of  fresh 
air.  Did  the  Pharisee  ask,  "  How  can  I  help  my 
poor  brothers  ?  "  No  :  he  asked,  "  How  much  is 
it  the  custom  to  give,  or  what  do  the  others  give?" 


NICODEMUS  33 

Did  he  ask,  "  How  can  I  make  the  most  of  the 
Sabbath  ?  "  Never !  He  asked  instead,  "  What 
things  must  I  refrain  from  doing,  so  as  not  to  run 
any  risks  ? "  Did  he  ask,  "  How  shall  I  come 
directly  to  the  heart  of  the  Eternal  ? "  He  did 
not  see  the  Eternal  at  all ;  but  he  pored  over  the 
letter  of  sacred  books  as  a  miserable  makeshift 
for  seeing  the  face  of  God.  The  Pharisee  did 
not  think  that  the  log  was  to  burn  and  give  heat 
and  light :  he  did  not  think  that  all  that  life  was 
for  was  to  put  log  upon  log  and  give  the  flame 
breathing  space  through  them ;  but  he  thought 
that  the  logs  were  to  be  preserved  as  they  were. 
He  forgot  that  the  stanchest  oak  logs,  if  you  bury 
them,  will  go  to  decay. 

The  seamy  side  of  Pharisaism  explains  itself. 
It  was  started  as  a  system  of  Puritanism  ;  but  no 
system  of  Puritanism  was  ever  started  that  did 
not  run  out  at  last  into  sham,  self-complacency, 
hypocrisy,  moral  deadness,  spiritual  pride.  Puri- 
tanism is  an  attempt  to  keep  yourself  intact,  in 
some  form  or  other  to  save  your  own  souls,  or, 
if  you  please,  to  have  moral  culture  for  your- 
selves and  the  families  of  people  like  you.  As 
soon,  however,  as  any  virtuous  set  or  congrega- 
tion of  people  withdraw  themselves  from  hearty 


34  JESUS   AND   THE   MEN   ABOUT   HIM 

sympathy  with  other  less  virtuous  or  more  igno- 
rant people  about  them,  the  dry  rot  of  self-com- 
placency sets  in  to  destroy  them.  Men  were  not 
meant  to  live,  even  in  select  communities  any 
more  than  as  individuals,  apart  from  the  others. 
There  was  never  yet  a  man  or  a  set  of  men  who 
thought  of  their  own  superiority  and  prided  them- 
selves on  their  virtue  or  their  religion  over  com- 
mon men,  who  had  heat  or  light  enough  to  help 
other  men  to  be  warm  or  to  see.  It  is  as  tho  the 
oak  log  cried  out,  "  See  what  good  wood  I  am !  " 
It  does  not  warm  you  to  say  that.  The  only 
thing  that  you  ask  of  the  oak  log  is  that  it  shall 
catch  fire ;  and  when  it  has  caught  fire,  then  and 
not  till  then  will  it  have  kindling  power  to  make 
other  wood  less  firm  and  solid  blaze  too. 

The  Pharisees,  moreover,  because  they  aimed 
to  preserve  everything  as  it  was,  were  constitu- 
tionally timid.  The  system  was  constituted  so 
as  to  prevent  change  or  movement.  "  See,"  they 
said,  "  we  have  a  high  standard.  We  have  at- 
tained it  with  difficulty.  Any  shock  might  tumble 
us  to  destruction."  The  Pharisees  did  not  have 
any  deep  faith  in  their  institutions  or  their  relig- 
ion. Men  never  have  any  real  faith  who  are 
afraid  that  something  may  hurt  the  truth,  so  that 


NICODEMUS  35 

you  must  handle  it  carefully, —  as  tho  a  man  were 
afraid  that  he  would  break  his  limbs  if  he  stirred 
to  use  them ! 

The  Pharisees  believed,  indeed,  in  a  vague 
way,  in  the  coming  kingdom  of  God;  but  they 
did  little  or  nothing  to  bring  it  in.  They  merely 
waited,  as  tho  it  had  nothing  to  do  with  men 
in  this  world.  They  were  content  to  keep  up 
their  petty  organization  of  six  thousand  families ; 
they  were  glad  to  make  occasional  wealthy  pros- 
elytes from  their  Gentile  neighbors;  but  as  for 
devoting  their  lives  to  make  this  world  over  into 
the  kingdom  of  God,  they  did  not  catch  the  idea. 
That  was  what  Jesus  meant,  when  he  told  Nico- 
demus  that  he  was  like  a  man  who  had  yet  to  be 
born  in  order  to  be  alive.  What  was  the  well- 
to-do  Nicodemus  doing  to  make  this  a  better 
world  ?  Was  there  any  light  and  gladness  where 
Nicodemus  walked,  such  as  a  son  of  God  ought 
to  carry?  Did  a  spirit  of  joy  and  health  go  from 
him  to  kindle  men's  souls?  Were  his  courage 
and  generosity  contagious  to  seize  other  men 
by  ?  No  :  he  was  not  awake.  He  had  no  spark 
of  enthusiasm.  His  God  was  far  off,  not  a  living 
God  here  to-day.  He  touched  men  with  no  fine 
uplifting    sense    of   the    common   humanity.      A 


36  JESUS    AND   THE    MEN   ABOUT    HIM 

thousand  men  as  good  as  Nicodemus  would  not 
have  saved  Jerusalem,  or  banished  its  poverty,  or 
lifted  men  out  of  their  degrading  vices.  A  dozen 
men,  not  nearly  so  good  as  Nicodemus,  who 
nevertheless  caught  the  fire  of  the  Christ's  love 
and  the  Christ's  faith,  could  do  more  for  the  re- 
generation of  the  city  than  all  the  Pharisee  sect. 
You  feel  this  the  moment  that  Jesus  and  Nico- 
demus meet.  In  Jesus'  presence  Nicodemus  is 
a  lay  figure.  It  is  not  the  stature  of  a  well 
and  real  man.  It  is  a  sick  man,  no  doubt  with 
rugged  constitution,  who  may  be  made  well 
again,  but  who  hardly  stands  up  at  all  in  com- 
parison with  Jesus'  overflowing  health  and  bound- 
less life.  Imagine  the  new  possibilities  that 
Jesus  set  before  Nicodemus !  Imagine  what 
such  a  man  as  that  might  have  risen  to  be  and 
to  do! 

We  have  spoken  with  no  reference  to  a  mere 
historical  retrospect.  Nicodemus's  story  is  the 
type  of  what  is  to-day  in  Boston  or  New  York  as 
truly  as  in  Jerusalem.  We  have  spoken  idly,  if 
we  have  not  shown  that  the  Pharisee  type  is  here. 
Neither  have  we  spoken  in  any  disparagement 
of  this  type  at  its  best.  It  is  of  the  best  moral 
fibre  that  we  know.     It  takes  Christ's  name  to 


NICODEMUS  37 

swear  by.  It  takes  the  Christian  ritual  and  cere- 
monies, and  fine  words  to  pray  in.  But  no  bap- 
tism or  holy  names  or  words  make  it  Christian. 
The  kindling  baptism  of  "the  Spirit  of  Christ,"  a 
vision  of  the  Christ's  ideal,  the  Christ-like  love 
that  offers  all  upon  the  altar  of  the  divine  human- 
ity, the  breath  of  the  life  of  God  on  the  soul, 
alone  can  redeem  our  modern  Pharisaism  and  fill 
Nicodemus's  being  with  joy  and  hope. 


III. 

NATHANAEL,  THE  PURE  IN  HEART. 

f^  ALILEE,  Jesus'  home,  was  the  northern 
^-^  division  of  Palestine,  being  roughly  two 
days'  journey  from  Jerusalem  through  the  inter- 
vening district  of  Samaria.  It  was  more  populous 
and  fertile  than  Judea.  In  Jesus'  time  it  was  full 
of  villages.  The  hillsides  were  terraced  with 
gardens.  Considerable  towns  —  Capernaum,  Ti- 
berias, and  others  —  were  clustered  about  the 
lake.  A  varied  commerce  was  carried  up  to 
Jerusalem  and  to  Egypt,  across  the  desert  to 
Damascus,  or  over  the  ridge  of  the  Lebanon 
range  to  the  Tyrian  coast,  where  you  might  have 
seen  ships  from  the  Nile,  from  Rome,  from  Tar- 
sus, and  from  Athens.  Large  towns  lay  among 
the  hills  over  the  lake  and  the  Jordan  valley  to 
the  east.  There  were  strong  castles,  palaces, 
race-courses,  theatres, —  the  marks  of  a  rich  and 
pleasure-loving  class.     But  most   of  the  swarm- 


NATHANAEL  39 

ing  population  lived  meagrely,  being  heavily  taxed 
and  oppressed.  The  Galilean  people  were  a 
mixed  race.  There  were  towns  of  Greek  names 
where  you  would  have  heard  Greek  commonly 
spoken.  There  were  people,  like  Herod's  family, 
from  the  old  Edomite  or  Idumean  tribes,  the  he- 
reditary enemies  of  the  Hebrews.  There  were 
Syro-Phoenicians  from  the  coast,  like  the  woman 
who  came  to  Jesus  to  be  healed.  There  were 
also  villages  where  the  Hebrews  were  the  leading 
people.  Can  a,  Nathanael's  home,  was  one  of 
these  villages.  No  one  knows  precisely  where 
the  little  village  was, —  probably  within  ten  miles 
or  an  afternoon's  walk  from  Nazareth.  It  was  the 
same  Cana  where  Jesus,  early  in  his  public  life, 
attended  a  wedding.  Indeed,  there  is  an  old 
tradition  that  Nathanael  was  the  bridegroom  on 
that  occasion. 

The  moral  condition  of  Galilee  in  Jesus'  time  is 
said  to  have  been  bad.  The  influx  of  foreigners 
with  strange  customs  and  foreign  rites  had  been 
going  on  at  least  since  Alexander  the  Great  and 
his  successors  had  overrun  the  country.  Con- 
tinual wars  had  wrought  their  natural  demoraliza- 
tion. An  unusual  tide  of  luxury,  upborne  by  the 
wearying  toil  of  the  multitudes,  now  lifted  its  un- 


40  JESUS   AND   THE   MEN   ABOUT    HIM 

sightly  waves.  The  wonder  is  how,  in  such  times 
as  these,  with  alluring  vice  in  front  and  despair 
dogging  men's  steps  behind,  any  virtue  or  faith 
survived.  The  fact  is,  however,  that  there  seems 
never  to  have  been  a  higher  level  of  character  or 
a  more  earnest  and  trustworthy  people  than  you 
find  throughout  Palestine  in  this  very  period. 
The  rise  of  John  the  Baptist  and  the  ready  hear- 
ing that  he  commanded,  the  high-minded  men, 
such  as  Joseph  of  Arimathea,  Nicodemus,  and 
Gamaliel,  the  friends  who  almost  everywhere 
await  Jesus  and  rally  to  his  side  as  disciples,  the 
devout  women  who  believe  in  him,  glimpses  of 
figures  of  the  true-hearted,  once  seen,  but  hardly 
again, —  the  Roman  centurion  who  had  built  a 
synagogue,  the  centurion  who  stood  by  the  cross, 
the  dying  robber  who  out  of  his  pain  recognized 
Jesus, —  these  facts  bespeak  an  undercurrent  of 
wholesome  vitality  that  no  temptations  could  se- 
duce nor  despair  and  doubt  kill ;  as  when  in  the 
height  of  a  fever,  while  the  disease  rages  over  the 
body,  the  skilled  physician  is  aware  of  the  little 
red  globules  in  the  blood,  which,  if  they  are  vital 
enough  and  if  they  are  not  too  few,  will  con- 
quer the  fever.  Such  are  the  vital  germs  in  a 
party,  in  an    army,   in    the   supporters   of   every 


NATHANAEL  4I 

good  cause,  often  unseen,  unthanked,  wonder- 
fully provided  by  God  when  the  time  comes,  on 
the  proper  proportion  of  whom  hangs  success. 
Would  to  God  it  could  be  given  to  us  to  be 
counted  by  the  Great  Physician  in  that  class  of 
the  saving  life-germs,  the  true-hearted  and  sound, 
whom  the  fever,  smoulder  or  burn  as  it  may  in 
the  blood  of  the  nation,  cannot  subdue ! 

They  say  that  a  naturalist,  given  one  or  two 
bones,  will  construct  the  creature  to  which  they 
belonged,  and,  if  you  please,  draw  a  rough  pict- 
ure of  what  he  looked  like.  So. out  of  two  or 
three  bare  facts  we  can  make  out  what  kind  of  a 
man  Nathanael  was.  We  make  him  out,  in  the 
first  place,  to  be  a  simple,  ordinary  man  of  the 
great  middle  class,  with  a  bit  of  a  plot  of  land 
outside  the  village,  with  a  fev/  olive-trees  and 
grape-vines,  and  a  little  house  built  of  mud  or 
stones  of  the  field  in  a  narrow  street  of  the  town. 
We  think  of  him  as  hardly  older  than  Jesus, — 
thirty  years  more  or  less, —  with  a  wife  and  little 
children,  perhaps,  in  the  tiny  home  in  Cana. 
You  would  not  have  seen  anything  peculiar 
about  him,  as  he  drove  his  oxen  in  and  out  of  the 
town  gate,  to  distinguish  him  from  other  plain 
men.     "  Merely  an  average  citizen,"  you    would 


42  JESUS    AND    THE    MEN    ABOUT    HIM 

have  said.  But  it  is  these  average  citizens,  as 
we  call  them,  of  the  great  middle  class  that 
nearly  everything  good  comes  from.  It  is  pre- 
cisely in  this  class  that  you  find  most  abundantly 
these  vital  germs  of  the  national  blood  that  we 
spoke  of.  These  vital  germs  of  the  true-hearted 
do  not,  probably,  flourish  so  well  among  the 
well-to-do,  or  prosperous  class.  They  exist,  but 
they  are  apt  to  be  thinner,  less  vital,  and  fewer. 
There  is  some  fatal  tendency  at  work  to  kill  them 
out,  as  tho  they  had  a  harder  time  to  live.  In 
the  great  revolution  in  England,  in  the  days  of 
Cromwell,  and  over  and  over  in  the  history  of 
our  country,  it  was  the  men  of  the  middle  class, 
the  mere  average  citizens,  who  not  only  gave  the 
muscular  force  and  the  sinews  of  war,  but  the 
brains,  the  courage,  the  persistence,  and  the  virtue, 
—  yes,  the  men  of  mark  to  be  leaders  and  states- 
men. Nathanael  came  of  what  Nature  calls  her 
best  stock, —  of  a  noble  mother,  we  may  be  sure ; 
of  pure,  honest,  faithful  parentage.  Who  wants 
anything  higher  than  that?  Nathanael  was  one 
of  the  men  who  went  to  hear  John  the  Baptist, 
and  was  doubtless  baptized,  Not  that  he  spe- 
cially needed  to  repent  and  lead  a  new  life,  but 
because,    like   Jesus,    if    baptism   was   good   for 


NATHAXAEL  43 

Others,  it  was  good  for  him  to  do  whatever  he 
wanted  others  to  do. 

It  is  a  puzzle  to  know  what  any  one  committed 
to  the  old-fashioned  doctrine  of  total  depravity 
would  make  of  what  Jesus  says  of  Nathanael, — 
"  an  Israelite  indeed,  in  whom  is  no  guile." 
Jesus  had  barely  seen  Nathanael.  The  latter 
did  not  know  Jesus  at  all  or  that  he  had  ever 
seen  him.  He  was  suspicious  of  the  Nazareth 
people,  who  had  no  great  reputation.  But  Jesus 
instinctively  recognized  him  at  once  as  his  kind  of 
man. 

Jesus'  theory  of  human  nature  was  quite  dif- 
ferent from  that  of  the  theologies.  He  held  no 
doctrine  whatever  that  men  are  all  born  corrupt, 
as  tho  a  physician  were  to  teach,  because  he  finds 
average  men  out  of  health,  that  men  were  all  born 
with  disease  in  their  blood.  But  Jesus  held,  as 
the  analogy  is  everywhere  else,  that  some  men  at 
least  are  born  well,  with  health  in  their  veins. 
He  took  Nathanael  to  be  such  a  man, —  a  really 
healthy,  simple,  sound,  moral  nature  ;  in  short,  one 
of  the  people  whom  we  think  of  as  naturally 
good.  We  think  of  him  as  growing  up  in  the 
midst  of  a  corrupt  population,  where  a  boy  saw 
and   heard   all   manner  of   profane,  vulgar,  and 


44  JESUS   AND   THE   MEN   ABOUT   HIM 

vicious  things  ;  but  he  had  no  affinity  for  such 
things.  His  natural  tastes  and  sympathies  were 
clean,  and  whatever  was  not  clean  did  not  cleave 
to  him.  We  think  of  him  growing  up  in  the 
midst  of  a  trading  community,  where  a  boy  saw 
and  heard  of  the  tricks  of  the  trade.  He  heard 
it  said  that  a  man  could  not  succeed  and  be 
honest ;  but  it  was  not  a  temptation  for  Nathanael 
to  go  into  any  business  where  a  man  was  expected 
to  lie.  At  the  same  time  we  do  not  think  of 
Nathanael  as  any  less  a  thorough  boy.  We  think 
of  him  as  no  timid  or  cowardly  youth,  but  out- 
spoken and  fearless.  It  did  not  occur  to  him, 
however,  that  he  was  doing  anything  else  than 
what  was  his  nature.  His  wonder  would  have 
been  that  boys  or  men  could  bear  to  soil  their 
hands  or  their  souls,  when  any  one  was  so  vastly 
happier  to  be  clean.  His  wonder  would  have 
been  that  men  could  bear  to  be  stingy,  when  it 
was  so  vastly  pleasanter  to  be  obliging;  that 
men  could  be  foolish  and  quarrel  instead  of 
the  easier  thing,  being  good-tempered ;  that  men 
could  hate  each  other,  when  so  much  wretched- 
ness wanted  to  be  borne  with  and  cured.  We 
think  of  Nathanael  as  a  man  whom  others  came 
to   for    help    and   advice,  perfectly   trustworthy, 


NATHANAEL  43 

whom  you  would  have  left  your  treasures  with  if 
you  went  on  a  journey,  or  appointed-  in  your  will 
to  be  executor  and  guardian. 

One  is  reminded  of  the  life  of  Abraham  Lin- 
coln. He  bore  some  of  the  marks  of  his  rude 
frontier  life.  Nevertheless,  without  being  as 
faultless  as  some  smaller  gems  of  his  type,  he 
strikes  one  as  the  type  of  man  like  Nathanael, 
being  essentially  a  large,  generous,  well-born, 
wholesome  nature.  It  was  no  temptation  to  Lin- 
coln to  take  more  than  belonged  to  him,  to  ask 
great  fees,  to  think  of  his  salary  instead  of  his 
work.  It  would  have  been  as  unnatural  for  such 
a  man  to  accept  bribes  as  it  is  unnatural  for  the 
mastiff  to  betray  his  master.  What  a  confidence 
we  have  in  such  a  man  in  those  respects  in  which 
his  goodness  is  simply  his  nature !  There  is  no 
danger  or  strain  of  temptation  in  those  respects. 
The  man  cannot  be  made  to  take  what  is  not  his, 
to  tell  a  lie,  to  desert  his  friends,  to  disappoint 
love,  or  to  give  up  a  cause.  It  is  as  tho  you  had 
your  road-bed  laid  on  one  of  Nature's  causeways, 
bedded  in  the  granite  rock,  beyond  the  risk  of  ac- 
cident. Thank  God  that  he  makes  such  men, 
who  do  not  have  to  struggle  to-  be  good,  being 
born  of  a  large  pattern !     How  we  admire  them ! 


46  JESUS   AND   THE   MEN   ABOUT   HIM 

How  beautiful  their  simple,  natural  superiority 
seems  to  us  ordinary  people,  born  with  mixed 
nature,  with  doubtful  tendencies ;  born  with  sad 
streaks  of  meanness  or  timidity,  with  our  sight 
not  perfectly  true,  with  baser  passions,  with  in- 
stincts that  catch  hold  of  the  good,  but  also  with 
lower  animal  instincts  to  which  evil  things  cling 
Yes  ;  and  who,  when  we  do  what  is  right,  are  apt 
to  plume  ourselves  on  it,  as  tho  it  were  anything 
out  of  the  common  for  a  man  to  do  right.  And 
then  we  see  one  of  these  Nature's  noblemen,  sin- 
cere, unaffected,  simple-hearted,  who  does  "  good 
as  the  bees  make  honey,"  because  it  is  man's 
true  nature  to  do  good.  We  are  ashamed  that 
we  should  ever  think  what  we  do  extraordinary, 
as  tho  a  soldier  were  to  think  it  extraordinary 
that  he  does  not  run  away,  or  an  engineer  were 
to  ask  praise  for  running  his  engine. 

We  said  that  there  is  every  analogy  why  Nature 
should  produce  men  born  to  goodness,  for  she 
gives  us  men  born  to  everything  else.  She  gives 
us  men  born  to  visions  of  art,  natural  geniuses. 
She  gives  to  some  a  native  power  of  memory. 
She  gives  born  athletes.  She  gives  us  born 
mathematicians' like  Colburn  and  musicians  like 
Beethoven.     She    raises   men   up  to  whom  it  is 


XATHANAEL  47 

natural  to  think  and  study,  to  ask  questions  and 
find  answers.  Why  should  she  not  give  us  men 
and  women  born  with  pure  thoughts,  with  native 
generosity,  with  instinctive  virtue  and  justice,  with 
courage,  with  large,  quick  sympathies,  who  would 
rather  serve  than  be  served  ?  Nature  undoubt- 
edly does  this.  "O  heart  of  man  naturally 
Christian  !  "    says  one  of  the  old  writers. 

The  truth  is,  this  native  goodness  sets  the 
standard  of  what  a  man  ought  to  be.  Nathanael's 
type  is  not  an  exceptional  type,  but  it  is  the 
normal  type,  such  as  every  man  ought  to  conform 
to  ;  as  tho,  when  Nature  produced  a  perfectly 
shaped  and  healthy  human  body,  she  were  to  say : 
"  See  !  That  is  my  pattern  for  all  human  bodies. 
Model  by  that.  Call  that  the  rule,  and  call  all 
the  bodies  that  fail  of  the  standard  misshapen 
or  diseased." 

Men  see  the  great  athlete  go  by,  and  hundreds 
of  youths  set  to  work  to  make  their  bodies  like 
his.  They  are  ashamed  of  puny  limbs  and  limp 
muscles.  Men  see  the  natural  scholar, —  an  Agas- 
siz,  for  example, —  and  a  whole  university  is  stirred 
to  build  ordinary  minds  up  to  the  model  of  what 
a  clear,  vitalized,  well-equipped  mind  should  be. 
So  when  men  see  the  normal  type  of  a  Nathaniel, 


48       JESUS  AND  THE  MEN  ABOUT  HIM 

—  frank,  thoroughly  open,  pure  in  heart.  There 
is  the  mark  of  what  every  man  ought  to  be.  You 
cannot  bear  to  be  sordid  and  greedy  in  such  a 
presence.  All  about  Nathanael  there  is  a  proc- 
ess of  levelling  upward,  precisely  as  when  boys 
live  on  the  same  street  with  the  athlete. 

We  see  the  difference  now  between  Nathanael 
and  Nicodemus.  We  respected  Nicodemus,  and 
had  to  pronounce  him,  as  men  go,  an  unusually 
satisfactory  man ;  but  he  strikes  us  as  an  artificial 
man,  not  simple  and  natural  like  the  stalwart  vil- 
lager, who,  as  seems  probable,  had  never  even 
joined  the  Pharisee  sect,  and  most  likely  found 
their  ceremonies  and  rules  irksome.  Nicodemus, 
we  take  it,  would  have  given  liberally  to  the  new 
synagogue,  but  he  would  have  wanted  to  know 
first  what  the  others  gave.  He  would  have  gone 
to  call  on  Jesus,  preferring  to  go  under  cover  of 
night ;  but  Nathanael  would  have  given  his  heart 
with  his  money.  It  would  hardly  have  occurred 
to  Nathanael  that  he  was  taking  a  risk,  to  do  what 
was  right  or  to  stand  by  his  friend.  Nathanael 
did  not  even  know  that  his  life  was  precious. 

There  is  a  possible  sense  of  discouragement  to 
us  ordinary  people  at  the  sight  of  pure  natural 
goodness,    as    the    ordinary    scholar    sometimes 


NATHANAEL 


49 


despairs  at  the  sight  of  the  men  who  seem  to 
learn  without  effort.  We  have  certain  compensa- 
tions, however.  In  the  first  place,  the  ordinary 
scholar,  even  if  he  cannot  attain  to  the  ease  of 
the  other,  can  succeed  in  doing  everything  that  the 
other  does.  As  while  you  would  prefer  Nature's 
solid  road-bed  for  your  track,  yet,  if  you  choose, 
you  can  make  a  road-bed  of  your  own  over  the 
bogs  or  across  the  ravine.  You  can  make  it  solid 
above  risk  of  its  giving  way.  There  is  nothing 
that  art,  skill,  cost,  patience,  may  not  do  for  your 
ordinary  nature.  You  have  known  men,  observ- 
ing the  laws,  build  up  weak  bodies  into  splendid 
athletic  condition.  You  have  known  common 
scholars  to  outrun  the  natural  scholars.  So  you 
have  known  faulty,  seamy  natures  built  up  into 
moral  vigor  and  elasticity.  The  fact  is  that 
Nature  works  to  help  us,  and  not  the  other  way. 
Nature  is  always  saying  to  the  feeble  and  imper- 
fect thing.  Try  to  live  ;  try  to  grow ;  move  up  to 
the  standard.  Her  currents  of  life  wait  to  flow 
through  you  as  soon  as  you  obey.  For  the  differ- 
ence between  one  man  and  another  is  not  so 
much  a  difference  in  nature,  as  tho  there  were 
different  varieties  of  men, —  for  there  is  only  one 
common    nature, —  but   the    difference    is,    as    it 


so  JESUS  AND   THE   MEN   ABOUT   HIM 

were,  in  nutrition  ;  that  is,  in  the  vitalizing  of  the 
nature,  one  man  being  more  alive  than  the  other. 
"  Be  more  alive,"  Nature  says,  "  and  I  will  make 
you  strong." 

Besides,  the  element  of  self-consciousness  is 
not  altogether  evil  when  once  it  is  restrained  to 
modesty.  There  is  a  sense  of  satisfaction  and 
enjoyment  in  supplementing  Nature,  as  of  the 
engineer  who  enjoys  building  the  somewhat  diffi- 
cult bridge  more  than  laying  the  ordinary  road- 
way. Nathanael,  who  did  not  feel  our  tempta- 
tions, had  not  the  joy  in  resisting  that  we  may 
feel  who  have  honestly  built  up  our  trestle-work 
to  the  point  where  we  stand  secure  under  the 
throb  of  the  passing  train ;  as  the  man  who  has 
always  lived  on  the  hills  is  not  so  happy  as  he 
who  has  lived  in  the  smoky  air  below,  and  then 
comes  to  the  hills ;  as  certainly  no  one  enjoys 
health  more  than  he  who  has  conquered  it  out  of 
the  teeth  of  disease. 

So  with  moral  health,  man's  only  normal  state. 
We  may  well  be  filled  with  shame  not  to  possess 
it.  We  may  see  the  ridiculousness  and  pitiable- 
ness  of  harboring  pride  or  superiority  over  men 
who  have  less  health  than  we,  as  tho  one  conva- 
lescent should  look  down  on  others  or  despise 


NATHAN AEL  SI 

the  sick ;  but  we  have  a  righteous  sense  of  joy, 
thankfulness,  and  ecstasy  that  we  are  at  last  on 
the  highway  of  health.  Even  Nathanael,  who 
had  never  needed  a  physician  or  knew  what  sick- 
ness was,  might  not  be  so  glad ;  and  he  might  be 
no  more  modest  than  we  are,  who  know  what  it 
is  to  have  been  morally  weak,  and  now  catch  the 
perfectly  delightful  hope  of  being  strong  and  well, 
as  the  children  of  God. 


IV. 
PETER  AND  JOHN  THE  DISCIPLES. 

JESUS'  friends  are  often  thought  of  as  poor 
people.  But  they  did  not  belong  to  the 
class  to  whom  you  have  to  give  alms.  They 
were  merely  poor  as  the  average  citizen  of  Gali- 
lee was  poor.  There  was  leisure  for  gossip,  for 
lessons  in  the  synagogue,  for  a  holiday  to  hear  a 
new  prophet  on  the  Jordan.  We  do  not  believe 
that  they  had  to  work  so  hard  or  so  many  hours 
a  day  as  the  poor  work  among  us.  Indeed,  pov- 
erty was  not  so  dreadful  an  enemy  in  the  mild 
climate  of  Palestine  as  it  is  in  the  vast  Christian 
cities  of  England  and  America,  where  cold  adds 
its  terrors.  Among  Jesus'  disciples  were  two 
pairs  of  brothers  from  Bethsaida,  one  of  the  fish- 
mg  villages  on  the  shore  of  the  lake  of  Tiberias. 
Tiberias  was  a  little  fresh-water  lake,  about  fifteen 
miles  long  and  six  wide,  through  which  flowed 
the  Jordan  River.     Here  was  the  scene  of  most 


PETER   AND   JOHN  53 

of  Jesus'  public  work.  Here,  where  the  cara- 
van road  left  the  lake  at  Capernaum,  was  Jesus' 
favorite  resting  place.  Near  by  was  the  beauti- 
ful plain  of  Gennesaret,  with  its  almost  tropical 
growth  of  fruits.  Across  the  lake  to  the  east  were 
bare,  precipitous  hills,  where  Jesus  found  solitude. 
You  could  climb  from  the  level  of  the  lake  to 
the  mountains  upon  the  west  and  north,  and  per- 
haps see  on  the  blue  of  the  Mediterranean  the 
packets  that  passed  from  Tyre  to  Joppa,  Caesarea, 
or  Alexandria.  The  fish  of  the  lake  of  Tibe- 
rias were  well-known  articles  of  commerce,  being 
salted  and  exported.  Considerable  numbers  of 
families  with  their  hired  men  were  supported 
by  the  business.  Their  fishing  boats  dotted  the 
surface  of  the  lake. 

One  of  the  stories  is  that  Jesus  made  the 
acquaintance  of  the  young  fishermen  by  the  Jor- 
dan, where  they  had  gone  to  hear  John  the  Bap- 
tist. It  would  seem  by  another  account  that  he 
found  them  at  their  work, —  according  to  one  Gos- 
pel, fishing;  by  another,  cleaning  their  nets  by  the 
sea.  Luke  says  that  Jesus,  being  pressed  by 
the  crowd,  asked  permission  of  Simon  to  use  his 
boat  from  which  to  speak  the  better  to  the  people 
thronging  the  shore.     Of  Jesus'  twelve  apostles. 


54  JESUS   AND   THE   MEN   ABOUT   HIM 

Strangely  little  is  known  ;  in  the  case  of  Simon  the 
Cananean,  Thaddeus,  and  Bartholomew,  hardly 
more  than  the  bare  mention  of  the  name.  The 
two  pairs  of  brothers,  James  and  John,  Peter  and 
Andrew,  stand  closest  to  Jesus,  tho  neither  James 
nor  Andrew  has  any  well-defined  identity  apart 
from  the  better  known  brothers,  John  and  Peter. 
These  two  appear  almost  inseparable  from  Jesus. 
He  is  more  affectionately  attached  to  them  than 
the  others.  He  takes  them  and  James  into  his 
privacy,  as  in  the  garden  of  Gethsemane.  Know- 
ing them,  you  know  what  the  best  of  the  disciples 
were. 

It  was  not  uncommon  in  Judea  for  a  teacher  to 
gather  about  himself  a  little  company  of  attached 
followers.  This  had  been  the  case  with  John 
the  Baptist,  whose  devoted  friends  followed  him 
to  the  fortress  where  he  gave  up  his  life.  The 
claims  of  personal  friendship  and  discipleship 
overrode  even  the  claims  of  the  family,  much 
more  the  interests  of  a  man's  business. 

Peter,  and  it  would  seem  John  also,  were  young 
married  men,  and  were  partners  in  the  fishery. 
They  gave  up  their  trade  and  left  their  homes  to 
follow  Jesus.  To  understand  how  Jesus  could 
have  found  men  willing  for  his  sake  to  relinquish 


PETER   AND   JOHN  S5 

everything,  one  must  remember  the  extraordinary 
expectations  with  which  people's  minds  were  filled. 
The  end  of  the  old  world  was  drawing  near.  The 
pain,  the  poverty,  the  misfortune,  the  national 
disgrace,  the  wicked  oppression,  would  cease. 
There  would  be  a  new  king.  Justice  would  at 
last  be  done.  If  there  was  as  much  as  a  chance 
that  these  startling  events  were  at  hand,  what  was 
the  fishing  business  by  the  lake  that  it  should 
bind  a  man  down  to  turn  his  life  into  shekels 
when  soon  life  and  death  would  be  at  issue  ?  The 
disciples  could  hardly  have  made  up  their  minds 
at  once  that  Jesus,  a  Nazareth  man,  was  the 
Prince  whom  people  looked  for;  but  there  was 
that  in  Jesus'  bearing  and  manner  of  teaching  — 
he  was  so  sincere,  disinterested,  and  authoritative 
—  that  when  he  said,  "Come,"  it  seemed  wrong 
not  to  come.  Do  you  not  know  that  there  are 
men  with  a  quality  of  power,  insight,  and  dignity 
that  it  is  hard  to  refuse  ?  Do  they  ask  help,  we 
give  it  to  them.  Do  they  ask  money,  we  are 
stirred  to  contribute.  Do  they  ask  people's  lives, 
as  such  men  did  ask  lives  in  the  great  Civil  War, 
men  are  moved  to  volunteer.  So  with  Jesus' 
royal  personality,  whom  humble  men  instinctively 
obeyed,  from  which  the  rich  young  ruler,  when 
he  had  refused,  turned  away  sorrowful. 


56  JESUS   AND   THE   MEN   ABOUT   HIM 

We  do  not  understand  that  we  have  in  Peter  and 
John  any  exceptional  quality  of  men,  that  they  so 
readily  became  Jesus'  disciples.  On  the  contrary, 
all  that  we  find  about  the  twelve  convinces  us 
that  they  stand  as  types  of  average  men  of  de- 
cidedly common  moral  character.  They  were  dull 
men,  extremely  slow  to  comprehend  their  Master's 
teaching,  wanting  to  have  even  parables  ex- 
plained. They  were  superficial,  with  an  eye  for 
outward  success,  numbers,  crowds,  popularity. 
They  were  narrow  and  ungenerous.  They  did 
not  like  it  that  some  one  not  of  their  own  number 
should  be  healing  in  Jesus'  name.  They  would 
have  liked  to  call  fire  down  on  a  Samaritan  vil- 
lage that  did  not  receive  them.  They  were 
jealous  of  each  other  and  quarrelsome.  James 
and  John  appear  scheming  to  secure  the  prom- 
ise of  the  prime  minister's  place  in  the  new  king- 
dom. What  shall  we  get,  says  Peter,  to  pay 
us  for  leaving  all?  It  is  the  same  men  who 
haggled  over  the  price  of  their  fish  at  the  lake, 
envious  if  another  boat  had  better  luck.  What- 
ever you  make  of  the  story  of  Peter  trying  to 
walk  on  the  sea,  it  stands  as  a  reminiscence  of 
the  conceit  of  a  small,  self-confident  nature. 
Another  familiar   story    exhibits    something    in 


PETER    AXD   JOHN  $7 

Peter  of  a  spirit  of  worldliness  more  offensive 
and  greedy,  we  suspect,  than  the  mere  words 
convey,  that  provokes  Jesus  to  turn  on  him  and 
say,  "  Get  thee  behind  me,  Satan."  People  often 
speak  of  Thomas  as  the  type  of  the  sceptic,  but 
it  is  not  the  truth-loving  sceptic,  the  earnest  in- 
quirer :  it  is  only  the  common,  stupid  sceptic, 
who  doubts  as  easily  as  he  believes.  One  of  the 
twelve  was  Judas, —  a  man,  we  suspect,  money- 
loving,  weak,  and  over-shrewd  rather  than  bad. 
Remembering  his  piteous  remorse  and  bitter 
death,  we  cannot  think  of  him  as  much  worse 
by  nature  than  the  eleven,  who  to  a  man  ran 
away  in  the  hour  of  their  Master's  distress,  as  the 
best  of  them'  could  not  keep  awake  through  the 
time  of  his  anguish ;  and  then,  in  the  trial,  Peter, 
the  boaster,  who  had  said  that  he  would  never 
desert  his  Lord,  steals  in  to  look  on,  and  before 
Jesus'  face  denies  that  he  knew  him,  while  a  few 
hours  later  it  is  left  to  Joseph  and  Nicodemus 
and  a  few  women  to  care  for  the  Master's  body. 
To  the  date  of  the  crucifixion  there  is  next  to 
nothing  told  of  these  disciples,  except  the  fact 
that  they  were  disciples,  to  stir  our  admiration  or 
respect.  There  is  not  one  of  them  that  shows 
the  moral  fibre  of  Nicodemus.     There  is  not   a 


58  JESUS   AND   THE   MEN   ABOUT   HIM 

particle  of  evidence  that  there  is  a  Nathanael 
among  them.  If  Peter  and  John  had  had  honor 
and  lands  and  position,  think  you,  were  they  the 
men  to  sacrifice  all  for  Jesus  ?  They  do  not  im- 
press us  so.  It  was  comparatively  easy  and  safe 
to  follow  Jesus,  or  they  would  not  have  done  it. 

It  is  not,  of  course,  strange  that  Jesus  should 
have  loved  poor  and  humble  men,  for  there  are 
poor  men  —  Nathanael,  for  example  —  who  are 
extraordinary  in  character;  but  these  men  were 
ordinary  in  character,  cowardly,  untruthful,  jeal- 
ous, selfish,  narrow-minded,  the  very  kind  of  men 
whom  you  would  suppose  Jesus  would  find  it  im- 
possible to  bear  and  associate  with.  Any  one  of 
our  American  congregations  ought',  you  say,  to 
produce  in  a  moment  twelve  better  men  to  make 
apostles  out  of,  that  could  be  depended  on,  of 
more  insight  and  moral  elevation,  of  large  chiv- 
alry, who  would  have  died  with  Jesus.  And  yet 
Jesus  loved  these  ordinary  men.  What  did  he 
find  in  them  to  love,  or  to  think  that  he  could 
make  into  the  quality  of  apostles?  It  is  as  tho 
to  the  unpractised  eye  there  were  shown  speci- 
mens of  gold-bearing  earth  or  rock.  The  un- 
practised eye,  expecting  to  see  nuggets  of  pure 
gold,  is  disappointed  at  this  mere  ordinary-look- 


PETER    AND   JOHN  59 

ing  earth  or  rock.  But  the  miner  knows  its  value. 
"  See,"  he  says,  "there  are  grains  of  gold  in  that 
earth,  there  are  veins  in  the  rock.  It  is  extremely 
precious,"  the  practised  miner  says.  His  imagi- 
nation leaps  forward  and  sees  the  great  bars  of 
pure  gold  that  by  and  by,  after  the  washing  and 
the  crucible,  will  be  made  out  of  this  very  or- 
dinary seeming  earth.  So  with  this  ordinary 
human  nature.  Looked  at  roughly,  you  do  not 
see  anything  noble  in  it.  The  world  scoffs  at  it. 
We  do  not  want  to  see  this  common  sand. 
"  Give  us  nuggets  and  bars  and  the  clear-cut 
coin  from  the  mint,"  sa3^s  the  voice  of  the 
world.  "  Nay,"  says  the  Christ,  "  give  us  this 
ordinary  human  nature,  with  the  gleam  of  the 
gold  of  God  that  shines  in  it.  What  does  it 
matter  that  it  has  dross  and  alloy,  since  the  pre- 
cious value  is  in  it  besides  .''  " 

Jesus'  teaching  is  never  that  human  nature  is 
ruined  and  worthless ;  on  the  contrary,  human 
nature  is  lovable.  Jesus  is  always  spying  out 
something  genuine  in  men.  Making  allowances 
for  bad  defects  and  a  good  deal  of  selfishness, 
Jesus  knew  that  the  disciples  had  a  spirit  of 
honest  loyalty.  Their  nature  was  mixed ;  but  it 
was  not  altogether  for  themselves  that  these  men 


6o  JESUS   AND   THE   MEN   ABOUT   HIM 

had  left  their  business  and  homes,  and  risked 
all  to  follow  him.  Stupid  as  they  were  in  ap- 
preciating their  Master,  they  believed  in  him 
and  loved  him.  They  really  meant  it  when  they 
promised  to  die  with  him.  Their  impulses  and 
feelings,  tho  so  far  only  emotional,  at  times  rose 
to  the  level  of  heroism.  These  rude  men  had 
also  a  glimmering  sense  of  ideals.  It  was  be- 
cause Jesus'  character  towered  above  them  that 
they  reverenced  him.  They  were  men  of  patri- 
otic mould,  who  caught  visions  of  the  new  Israel 
that  was  to  be.  Without  clear  insight  of  religion, 
they  had  religious  aspirations.  Above  all,  they 
had  a  sense  of  duty.  They  meant  to  do  right. 
You  could  appeal  not  in  vain  to  their  consciences. 
You  could  even  rebuke  them,  and  they  would 
bear  it,  knowing  that  it  was  for  their  good.  They 
had  the  excellent  quality  of  persistence,  or  hold- 
ing out.  They  had  been  tested  in  all  these  re- 
spects. Other  men  had  also  enrolled  themselves 
as  Jesus'  disciples,  and  had  become  tired  or  dis- 
couraged, and  had  given  him  up ;  but  the  twelve 
had  held  on.  No  mere  adventurers  or  time- 
servers  or  self-seekers  would  have  stayed  with 
Jesus.  The  disciples'  qualities  of  faithfulness, 
loyalty  to  a  leader,  personal   affection,  religious 


PETER   AND   JOHN  Ol 

aspiration,  patriotism,  conscience,  obedience  to 
ideals, —  you  are  almost  tempted  to  call  these 
rare  qualities.  In  the  form  of  the  pure,  refined 
nugget  of  gold  they  are  rare ;  but  mixed  in  the 
dross  and  alloy  they  are  very  frequent,  being 
qualities  of  average  human  nature.  They  are 
the  qualities  of  the  great  middle  class, —  we  mean 
middle  class  not  in  means,  but  in  morals,  who  are 
neither  rich  nor  poor  in  moral  character.  Alto- 
gether below  them  are  the  poor,  the  only  really 
poor  in  this  world,  in  whom  these  average  qualities, 
the  gleams  of  the  divine  gold,  are  scant  and  thin, 
lost  in  the  bulk  of  the  dross.  God  pity  the 
morally  poor,  the  sad  unfortunates  who  seem  not 
to  have  it  in  them  to  be  faithful,  in  whom  stir  no 
aspirations  for  holy  and  beautiful  things,  who 
do  not  even  admire  the  Christ  when  they  see  him  ! 
These  only  are  poor.  Be  sure  God  does  pity 
them.  Be  sure,  wherever  one  grain  of  the  true 
gold  is  hidden,  there  is  love  enough  in  the  uni- 
verse to  redeem  it.  This  divine  gold  has  a  magic 
affinity  to  find  its  like  and  to  gather  every  particle 
to  itself. 

We  liken  Jesus  to  a  soldier  who  has  mustered 
in  a  company  of  recruits.  It  is  not  necessary  that 
these  be  picked  men,  ready  to  make  officers  of ; 


62  JESUS   AND   THE   MEN   ABOUT   HIM 

it  is  not  necessary  that  they  should  have  had 
experience  in  drilling  or  in  the  field,  or  that  they 
should  be  stronger  or  braver  than  common.  All 
that  is  necessary  is  that  they  shall  be  average 
men,  of  ordinary  qualities  of  strength,  endurance, 
intelligence,  courage,  and  morals.  They  must  not 
have  the  average  lowered  by  shirks  and  bounty- 
jumpers.  The  trained  soldier  who  enlisted  these 
men  foresees  that  they  will  be  awkward,  that  they 
will  be  homesick  and  weary  and  sometimes  wish 
that  they  had  not  come,  that  they  are  liable  to 
panic  and  rout.  But  he  also  foreknows,  so  be 
he  has  average  material,  that  he  will  weld  these 
men  into  thorough  soldiers,  hardy,  fearless,  and 
patient,  who  will  march  to  the  cannon's  mouth  at  a 
word,  who  will  die  together,  if  need  be,  like  Wash- 
ington's veterans  at  Valley  Forge.  So  Jesus  took 
the  average  human  nature  such  as  he  could  get. 
If  he  could  not  do  his  work  with  such  stuff  as 
common  men  are  made  of,  if  his  principles  would 
not  serve  average  human  nature,  if  his  truths 
were  only  good  for  saints  and  philosophers,  they 
were  not  good  for  this  world  at  all.  "Give  me 
average  men,"  Jesus  said,  "  and  I  will  make  my 
invincible  soldiers  before  whom  the  kingdom  of 
evil  will  fall." 


PETER   AND   JOHN  63 

There  is  one  quality  which  makes  disciples 
which  we  have  so  far  omitted.  It  is  docility,  or 
willingness.  Jesus  could  not  have  done  any- 
thing without  it.  As  we  have  seen,  there  was 
moral  material  to  be  had  considerably  better 
than  Jesus  found  in  his  disciples ;  precisely  as, 
when  a  recruiting  agent  went  into  a  town  in  the 
time  of  the  war,  there  would  be  the  material  for 
soldiers  left  in  the  town  after  he  had  gone  away 
better  than  much  which  he  took.  There  would 
be  men  of  splendid  natural  capacity,  who  did  not 
sympathize  with  the  war  or  who  were  too  busy 
with  their  private  affairs.  What  distinguishes  the 
recruits  is  that  they  have  enlisted^  whereas  perhaps 
better  men  stay  at  home.  They  have  committed 
themselves  to  obey  orders  and  do  a  soldier's 
work.  So  Jesus'  disciples,  being  ordinary  men  in 
other  respects,  were  different  from  other  ordinary 
men  or  even  better  men  by  nature,  in  that  they 
had  committed  themselves,  while  they  were  with 
Jesus,  to  be  taught  and  to  obey. 

This  is  where  the  great  mistake  is  made  about 
what  it  is  to  be  a  Christian.  There  is  nowhere 
a  hint  that  a  Christian  pretends  to  be  better  than 
other  men.  He  often  is  not  naturally  so  good. 
Much  less  is  there  a  hint  that  he  professes  to  be 


64  JESUS   AND   THE   MEN   ABOUT   HIM 

perfect.  He  is  simply  an  enlisted  man.  He  is 
pledged  to  a  certain  ideal  of  life,  to  be  a  learner. 
Show  him  what  the  Christ  bids,  he  will  at  least 
move  toward  doing  it.  Show  him  what  the  will 
of  God  is,  and  he  will  try  to  accept  it.  Show 
him  what  the  spirit  of  the  Christ  is,  it  is  what  he 
wants  to  exhibit.  Duty  says,  "  Storm  the  fort  "  : 
the  enlisted  man  will  try,  tho  he  may  lay  down  his 
life  in  the  breach  outside ;  or,  if  sudden  panic 
seizes  him,  he  may  be  depended  on,  at  the 
voice  of  his  captain,  to  rally  to  the  colors  again. 
This  definition  of  Christianity  is  the  same  essen- 
tially, whether  we  take  the  modern  and  even 
radical  interpretation  or  the  old-fashioned  inter- 
pretation. Whatever  is  right,  the  Christian  is 
pledged  to  try  to  do  it.  What  is  true,  the  Chris- 
tian is  pledged  to  try  honestly  to  find  out.  What 
ought  to  be,  the  Christian  is  enlisted  to  make 
that  real. 

It  is  easy  to  see  why  Jesus  made  so  much  of 
discipleship.  The  need  in  the  war  was  soldiers, 
enlisted  men.  It  was  idle  merely  to  say  that  you 
sympathized  with  the  national  cause  while  you 
were  spending  your  time  in  making  money  for 
yourself.  It  was  idle  to  show  that  you  had  the 
courage  and  physique  for  a  soldier,  unless  some- 


PETER  AND   JOHN  65 

how  you  co-operated  to  help  the  soldier's  cause. 
Indeed,  there  is  a  certain  deterioration  in  quaH- 
ties,  however  excellent,  unless  they  are  put  out  to 
discipline.  "  I  have  an  ear  for  music  and  a  natu- 
ral voice,"  some  one  says,  "  and  I  will  not  take  a 
master."  It  is  almost  certain  that  that  fine  natu- 
ral voice  goes  to  waste'  or  ruin.  "  I  have  not 
much  voice,"  some  one  else  modestly  says,  "but 
I  will  take  the  best  master  there  is.  I  will  bear 
his  criticism.  I  will  practise  his  rules."  Pres- 
ently, this  common  voice  grows  clear  and  sweet 
and  strong.  For  Nature  is  against  all  self-com- 
placency :  Nature  is  always  pushing  men  to  take 
masters  and  get  discipline,^- that  is,  discipleship. 
Nature  urges  us  all  to  obey  rules.  "  Obey  rules, 
or  you  perish,"  she  says.  Nature  is  always  organ- 
izing men  to  work  together,  to  join  the  school  or 
university,  to  enlist  and  co-operate,  to  obey  orders. 
The  man  who  enlisted  rose  from  the  ranks 
and  came  home  a  hero.  The  man  who  stayed  at 
home  to  take  care  of  himself  died,  and  no  one 
cared  for  his  loss.  So  with  the  disciples.  The 
noble  young  man  in  the  story  would  not  enlist, 
and  no  one  ever  hears  of  him  again.  But  Peter 
and  the  rest,  rustics  and  fishermen,  rose  from  the 
ranks  to  apostleship,  martyrdom,  and  immortality. 


66  JESUS   AND   THE   MEN   ABOUT   HIM 

The  same  happens  daily.  The  youth  of  to-day 
vows  the  eternal  old  vow  of  the  Christ :  "  Show 
me  the  right,  and,  so  help  me  God,  I  will  do  it." 
So  all  the  world's  heroes  come.  Failing  that  vow, 
men's  lives  run  out  into  ignominy. 

One  thing  more.  We  have  left  a  whole  half  of 
the  disciples'  lives  untouched.  Something  hap- 
pened to  them  after  a  while, —  except  to  poor 
Judas,  who  fell  out  and  lost  himself.  The  schol- 
ars who  plodded  over  the  dusty  routine  came  at 
last  to  a  point  where  they  caught  the  secret  of  the 
Master.  They  could  do  what  he  did.  They  had 
got  out  of  the  fogs  about  the  base  of  the  moun- 
tain ;  and,  as  the  whole  wonderful  prospect  that 
he  had  told  them  of  burst  upon  them,  they  became 
new  men  and  masters,  too.  The  very  men  who 
had  run  away  from  the  Roman  spears,  raised  to  a 
new  power,  braved  crucifixion  themselves.  Their 
selfishness,  purged  away,  left  the  sterling  gold  of 
love.  Their  faith  became  invincible.  So  much 
for  what  Jesus  could  do  with  average  men.  "  It 
is  not  essential,"  Jesus  said,  "  to  purchase  choice 
oak  to  build  the  fire."  The  world  can  be  warmed 
and  lighted  without  the  superior  quality  of  Nico- 
demus  and  the  Pharisee  sect.  Bring  on  mere 
average  wood  and  pile  it  on  the   hearth.     That 


PETER    AND   JOHN  d'J 

was  discipleship;  namely,  the  willingness  to  give 
one's  self  up  for  the  world's  heat  and  light.  But, 
while  the  superior  oak  piled  by  itself  neither 
warmed  nor  lighted  a  soul,  this  mere  average 
wood, —  yes,  with  crooked  sticks  and  inferior 
fibre,  that  yet  gave  itself  to  the  service  of  the 
great  household, —  catching  at  last  the  holy  flame 
of  Christ,  blazed  and  burned  and  shone,  and  the 
world  thanked  God  and  blessed  it  till  the  cold 
oak  itself  began  to  catch  the  heat. 


V. 

JESUS,  THE   MASTER. 

JESUS'  town  of  Nazareth  was  small  and  un- 
important. It  is  not  mentioned  in  the  Old 
Testament ;  and,  except  for  the  Gospels,  its  name 
would  never  have  been  preserved.  It  was  about 
twenty  miles  from  the  Lake  of  Tiberias  on  the  east 
and  the  Mediterranean  on  the  west.  Rounded 
limestone  hills,  four  or  five  hundred  feet  high,  rise 
above  the  valley  where  the  town  lies.  .  From  one 
of  these  hills  you  can  see  the  Mediterranean  and 
Mount  Carmel  and  the  great  plain  of  Galilee, — 
the  scene  of  many  a  battle, —  the  Samaritan  hills 
beyond,  and  Mount  Hermon,  always  snow-cov- 
ered, more  than  fifty  miles  to  the  north.  Jeru- 
salem lay  beyond  the  Samaritan  country  about 
seventy  miles,  or  three  days'  journey.  The  coasts 
of  Tyre  and  Sidon  under  the  shadow  of  Mount 
Lebanon  were  less  than  three  days'  journey  in 
the    opposite    direction.     Between    these    limits, 


JESUS  69 

north  and  south  about  the  length  of  Massachu- 
setts, and  east  and  west  from  the  Mediterranean 
to  the  country  across  the  Jordan,  about  the  width 
of  Massachusetts,  was  comprised  probably  all  that 
Jesus  ever  saw  of  the  world  we  live  in.  Entering 
the  gate  of  Nazareth,  you  would  have  seen  narrow 
streets,  with  low  houses,  each  built  around  a 
court-yard  where  the  domestic  animals  could  be 
driven  at  night  or  in  war.  The  plain  building  of 
the  synagogue  would  have  perhaps  been  the 
most  conspicuous  object.  The  inhabitants  of  the 
town  were  small  farmers  and  tradespeople.  They 
spoke  in  the  somewhat  harsh  Galilean  dialect,  by 
which  a  citizen  of  Jerusalem  would  have  detected 
a  native  of  the  country.  The  Nazareth  people 
had  no  reputation  which  would  have  led  any  one 
to  expect  a  rabbi  or  prophet  among  them.  On  the 
contrary,  they  appear  in  the  narrative  of  the  Gos- 
pels to  have  been  specially  narrow-minded  and 
fanatical.  It  was  at  Nazareth,  Jesus'  home,  where 
they  would  have  taken  his  life.  In  this  obscure 
Jewish  village,  Jesus  grew  up,  the  eldest  son,  as 
it  appears,  of  a  considerable  family,  to  the  un- 
eventful life  of  a  carpenter. 

Let  us  see  the  reading  and  education  which  he 
had.     Besides  the  books  that  make  the  Old  Testa- 


70  JESUS    AND   THE    MEN    ABOUT    HIM 

ment  and  the  Apocrypha,  one  might  have  found 
in  Nazareth  the  so-called  "  Book  of  Enoch,"  the 
"Psalms  of  Solomon,"  and  a  few  other  manu- 
scripts, such  as  fed  the  popular  Messianic  expec- 
tations. Of  nearly  all  other  books,  especially  of 
Greek  or  Latin  literature,  Jesus  would  have  known 
nothing.  Of  the  science  of  nature,  he  gleaned 
only  what  the  watchful  observer  discovered  for 
himself  of  the  flight  of  the  sparrow  or  the  lilies  of 
the  valley.  Of  the  life  of  the  great,  of  the 
world's  politics,  of  the  vast  power  beyond  the  sea 
in  Italy,  whose  legions  passed  by  to  fight  the 
Parthians  on  the  frontier,  of  her  famous  system 
of  laws,  this  young  Galilean  could  have  had  only 
the  most  meagre  intelligence. 

Jesus  lived  at  Nazareth,  it  would  seem,  till  he 
was  thirty  years  old.  People  thought  of  him  as 
the  carpenter  or  the  carpenter's  son.  So  humble 
had  his  life  been  up  to  this  time  that  Nathanael, 
a  citizen  of  Cana,  only  two  hours'  walk  from 
Nazareth,  seems  not  to  have  heard  of  him.  What 
had  he  been  doing  these  thirty  years  ?  What 
had  he  been  silently  thinking  about }  What  mar- 
vellous secret  had  he  caught,  that  he  should  sud- 
denly appear  with  the  strange  figure  of  John  the 
Baptist  at  the  Jordan, —  that,    when   John's  life 


JESUS  71 

was  quenched,  Jesus  should  take  his  place,  with 
John's  boldness,  but  with  a  new  and  original  ease, 
dignity,  and  authoritativeness  ?  It  is  not  certain 
that  Jesus'  public  life  lasted  more  than  a  year. 
Suppose  it  was  three  years. '  It  ended  in  ignominy  ; 
and  yet  Jesus'  career  marks  an  epoch  in  the 
history  of  the  world.  Wherein  does  this  unique- 
ness of  Jesus  consist  ?  What  had  he  to  contrib- 
ute that  the  world  needed  or  that  other  men  did 
not  have  ? 

Was  he  unique  in  the  wonderful  things  which 
he  did,  in  certain  supernatural  powers  of  which 
the  world  has  made  great  account  ?  But  just  such 
wonderful  things  are  told  of  others.  Substan- 
tially, everything  that  the  world  has  accounted 
marvellous  in  the  story  of  Jesus  is  to  be  found  in 
the  stories  of  Elijah  and  Elisha,  even  to  the  raising 
of  the  dead ;  but  the  world  is  hardly  interested  in 
Elijah  and  Elisha.  In  fact,  people  do  not  believe 
in  Jesus  to-day  as  they  once  did,  because  he  is 
reported  to  have  \vorked  miracles ;  but,  when  they 
believe  the  miracles,  it  is  because  they  first  believe 
in  Jesus.  Was  Jesus  unique,  then,  in  the  new 
truths  which  he  brought.?  We  can  hardly  find 
a  single  teaching  of  Jesus  that  has  not  its  coun- 
terpart in  the  words  of  earlier  men.     His  most 


72  JESUS   AND    THE   MEN    ABOUT    HIM 

beautiful  law,  "  Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as 
thyself,"  he  only  quotes.  The  belief  in  immor- 
tality, associated  with  him,  was  perhaps  as  general 
among  the  Jews  of  Jesus'  time  as  it  is  to-day. 

The  story  also  was  of  other  sinless  men, — 
Enoch,  for  example.  There  had  been  blameless 
men,  friends  of  God  and  prophets,  in  whom  the 
world  has  seen  no  fault.  Jesus  himself  had 
praised  Nathanael  as  such  a  blameless  man. 
Neither  did  Jesus  seem  directly  to  accomplish 
anything.  The  marvel  is  to  account  for  such  re- 
sults as  we  see  to-day  in  his  name,  with  only  a 
year  or  two  of  the  preaching  of  one  who  did  not 
strive  nor  lift  up  his  voice  in  the  streets.  Yet  we 
all  feel  the  fact  of  Jesus'  uniqueness.  When  we 
praised  the  noble  and  austere  character  of  John 
the  Baptist,  we  felt  a  lack  in  him  as  soon  as  Jesus 
appeared.  When  we  were  about  to  praise  Nico- 
demus,  the  picked  man  of  the  Puritan  or  Pharisee 
sect,  the  appearance  of  Jesus  dwarfed  Nicodemus. 
When  we  found  Nathanael,  a  man  of  pure  natural 
goodness,  there  was  that  in  Jesus  which  marked 
him  as  a  distinctly  higher  type. 

It  is  as  well  to  acknowledge  that  there  are  some 
things  which  you  cannot  explain.  What  was  it  in 
Jenny  Lind's  voice  that  entranced  her  generation? 


JESUS  73 

It  was  a  human  voice,  not  an  angel's.  She  sang 
the  same  old  notes  that  others  had  sung.  She 
invented  nothing ;  but  her  name  is  immortal  in 
the  annals  of  song.  Girls  to-day  live  in  the  hope 
of  doing  what  Jenny  Lind  did.  The  fact  is,  God's 
world  is  full  of  such  surprises.  Flavors,  fra- 
grances, harmonies,  or  proportions,  a  beautiful 
face,  a  sweet  voice,  the  works  of  genius,  the  com- 
mon daily  fact  of  love,  the  aspirations  of  faith, 
man's  hope  of  immortality, —  all  touch  upon  mys- 
tery that  no  science  can  more  than  name.  So  of 
Jesus'  life. 

Jesus'  characteristic  ideas  are  perfectly  familiar. 
He  held,  first  of  all,  that  God  was  the  most  real 
fact  in  the  universe.  No  one  was  so  near  as  God. 
His  presence  simply  wrapped  you  around.  Your 
spirit  only  had  life  through  the  breathing  of  the 
spirit  of  God  revealed  in  every  sky  and  star.  Of 
power,  truth,  or  thought,  you  are  only  a  channel 
or  vehicle  to  carry  and  transmit.  The  one  fact 
of  God  explains  and  unifies  everything.  Man  has 
nothing  that  belongs  to  him  exclusively.  His  life 
is  simply  to  do  whatever  the  divine  will  bids. 
According  to  Jesus,  the  law  that  bound  all  was 
love.  Love  was  the  highest  thing.  Love  was  the 
life  of  the  great  Father  of  all,   and,  by  conse- 


74  JESUS   AND   THE   MEN   ABOUT   HIM 

quence,  of  his  children.  Trust  the  dictates  of 
love,  then,  wherever  it  led  you.  Follow  it,  though 
it  bade  sacrifice  and  martyrdom.  Giving  up  all 
for  love's  sake,  losing  life  if  you  must,  yet  keeping 
love,  you  kept  the  life  of  God. 

There  are  certain  striking  and  memorable 
passages  that  always  convey  these  ideas, —  the 
beatitudes,  for  example,  and  especially  the  words : 
"Blessed  are  the  pure  in  heart,  for  they  shall 
see  God  "  ;  "  Love  your  enemies  " ;  "  For  he 
maketh  his  sun  to  rise  on  the  evil  and  on  the 
good " ;  "  It  is  more  blessed  to  give  than  to 
receive  "  j  "God  is  a  Spirit,  and  they  that  worship 
him  must  worship  him  in  spirit  and  in  truth." 
Jesus  found  men  everywhere  selfish ;  that  is, 
seeking  first  to  save  their  own  lives.  He  saw 
that  the  secret  of  life  was  the  opposite.  For  this 
was  a  universe  in  which  God  reigned.  He,  then, 
who  would  give  his  life  to  serve  God  —  i.e.,  to 
speak  the  truths  and  do  the  deeds  of  God  — 
should  find  life ;  precisely  as  each  little  cell  of 
the  vine  finds  its  own  life  by  passing  onward  the 
life  of  the  vine,  not  by  stopping  and  clogging 
its  flow.  What  makes  the  whole  vine  grow  will 
make  every  branch  grow.  First,  then,  serve  the 
life  of  the  whole,  and  the  whole  will  take  care  of 


JESUS  T^ 

you,  its  parts.  Thus  Jesus  said,  speaking  out 
of  his  experience,  "  My  meat  is  to  do  the  will  of 
him  that  sent  me." 

These  ideas  traverse  the  New  Testament ;  but 
they  are  all  found  in  the  Old  Testament,  not  to 
speak  of  other  scriptures.  Characteristic  as  they 
were  of  Jesus,  he  had  not  altogether  cleared  them 
(as  no  man  of  his  age  could  have  cleared  them) 
of  the  prevailing  superstitions  of  the  time,  in 
which  every  Jewish  child  was  brought  up.  Nev- 
ertheless, Jesus  did  what  others  had  only  partially 
done  or  talked  of  doing.  He  put  his  ideas  into 
practice,  and  did  not  simply  contemplate  them, 
like  the  Pharisees.  He  lived  as  though  the  good 
God  was  real.  He  did  not  say  that  matter  was 
evil,  like  the  Essenes ;  but  he  consistently  enjoyed 
God's  beautiful  world.  He  held  his  life  as  not 
his  own.  He  treated  men  as  brethren,  loved  them 
as  himself,  gave  himself  utterly  to  the  service  of 
the  great  brotherhood.  What  God  showed  as 
true,  he  spoke  without  fear.  What  God  showed 
to  be  right,  he  actually  did.  He  tried  to  bring 
about  the  ideal  kingdom  of  peace  which  others 
had  dreamed  of.  He  said  to  men, —  if  not  in 
so  many  words,  yet  substantially, —  "  Let  us  join 
hands  together,  and  make  the  good  times  real." 


76  JESUS    AND    THE   MEN   ABOUT   HIM 

All  this  was  new.  The  prophets  and  John  the 
Baptist  had  been  as  fearless  as  Jesus,  perhaps  as 
obedient ;  but  they  had  spoken  of  God's  world  as 
yet  to  come.  Jesus  said  that  God's  world  was 
here  already.  It  was  a  new  attitude, —  easy,  un- 
constrained, and  gladsome.  There  had  been  in 
all  ages  quiet  instances  of  peace-loving,  just, 
and  guileless  souls  like  Nathanael ;  but  it  had 
not  occurred  to  them  to  do  anything  more  than 
to  live  their  pure  lives.  The  temptation  was 
to  get  away  from  the  sinners ;  but  Jesus  held 
that  his  life  belonged  to  the  sinners.  He  lived 
for  the  sake  of  bringing  about  a  change  in  the 
social  order,  so  that  men  should  cease  to  be  sin- 
ners. That  was  what  he  made  disciples  for. 
There  was  nothing  morbid,  ascetic,  or  gloomy  in 
this  man,  with  whom  God  was  now  present,  who 
lived  above  the  fear  of  death,  who  stood  for  the 
coming  age  of  gold. 

In  the  famous  battle  above  the  clouds  at  Chat- 
tanooga, while  men  fought  uncertainly  in  the  mist 
below,  the  advance  guard  of  the  attacking  force 
climbed  high  enough  to  seize  the  higher  lines  in 
the  enemy's  rear.  The  battle  was  not  yet  fin- 
ished. The  advance  guard  would  yet  have  to 
lay  down   their  lives  ;    but,  if  that  higher  point 


JESUS  77 

were  won,  the  cause  was  assured.  So  with  Jesus' 
conquest  of  evil.  Down  in  the  mists  below,  the 
prophets  and  ascetics  had  fought  a  doubtful  bat- 
tle with  evil  on  its  own  level.  But  Jesus  had 
gained  a  vantage-ground,  from  which  the  nature 
of  the  conflict  was  altered.  Let  men  once  seize 
this  elevation,  and  there  would  hardly  need  to  be 
any  more  waste  of  life.  One  man  here  was  bet- 
ter than  a  hundred  fighting  on  the  level  below. 
What  could  not  twelve,  or  a  company  of  true  men, 
do  from  this  higher  vantage-ground,  where  already 
the  very  sight  of  the  sacred  flag  of  brotherly  love 
put  the  evil  forces  to  flight  ? 

Jesus'  method  or  secret  has  become  a  sort  of 
proverb.  It  is  not  enough  that  you  have  in  a 
family,  a  community,  a  parliament,  average,  well- 
intentioned  men  like  Peter  and  John.  They  will 
be  voted  down,  or  persuaded  to  evil,  or  craftily 
bought.  It  is  not  enough  that  you  have  quiet, 
patient  men  like  Nathan ael,  here  and  there  one, 
who  cannot  be  persuaded  or  purchased.  It  is  not 
enough  that  you  have  the  stern  voice  of  a  prophet 
denouncing  evil.  But  give  us  one  man  of  utter 
disinterestedness,  who  pities  the  guilty  while  he 
loves  the  oppressed, —  committed  body  and  soul 
to  serve  the  whole  family  or  the  whole  nation, — 


78  JESUS   AND   THE   MEN   ABOUT   HIM 


who  treats  everything  from  the  point  of  view 
of  love,  and  such  a  man  becomes  an  invincible 
leader. 

Another  thing.  Men  had  been  used  to  go  by 
laws  and  rules,  as  they  mostly  go  now.  You 
could  hold  on  to  your  technical  private  rights. 
You  could  be  ungenerous  ;  you  could  act  in  dis- 
trust toward  your  neighbor;  you  could  cut  off 
your  disobedient  child  with  a  shilling ;  you  could 
be  hard,  unforgiving,  and  proud ;  you  could  in- 
sist upon  the  exact  terms  of  the  contract.  Jesus 
swept  all  these  excuses  away,  when  he  asked  of 
each  and  all,  "  How  about  your  spirit  ?  "  "  Was 
your  act  or  word  in  the  right  spirit  ? "  It  is  a 
new  standard  when  any  one  recognizes  this  ideal 
of  the  right  spirit.  How  our  egotism  wriggles 
and  twists  to  get  away  from  the  kindly  hold  of 
that  sort  of  conviction !  "  But,"  our  egotism  says, 
"  it  was  the  law,  and  I  ought  to  have  my  rights, 
and  the  other  had  injured  me " ;  or  "I  only  did 
as  others."  And  then  we  lift  up  our  eyes  and 
catch  the  wonderful  standard,  so  subtle  and  yet 
so  imperative, —  the  spirit  of  Christ. 

The  steel  needle,  so  far  as  it  is  only  of  steel, 
will  not  point  true  to  the  north.  It  will  point 
wherever  you  lay  it  down.     Magnetize  the  steel, 


JESUS  79 

if  you  want  it  to  point  to  the  north.  So  men's 
lives,  so  far  only  as  they  are  of  good  material, 
will  not  necessarily  hold  true  to  the  life  of  God. 
But  Jesus'  life  was  magnetized  and  possessed. 
The  life  and  forces  of  God  played  through  it.  It 
gave  itself  utterly  to  their  motion.  Whither  the 
spirit  pointed,  there  it  went.  It  is  not  merely 
the  goodness  of  the  excellent  material  that  the 
world  wants.  It  wants  vitalized  goodness.  It 
wants  men  like  Jesus  alive  and  awake  in  every 
city,  village,  and  household.  It  wants  not  merely 
kindly-intentioned  people,  but  people  magnetized 
to  a  purpose,  vitalized  with  love,  committed  to 
the  Christ's  kind  of  life. 

Here  is  the  secret  of  all  unity  among  men. 
Vitalize  men  with  the  spirit  of  Christ,  and  such 
men  will  think  and  act  together.  The  magne- 
tized material  points  the  same  way.  What  does 
the  voice  of  God  bid  us  do  for  the  love  of  man  ? 
Christ's  way  is  the  way  that  every  soul  asking 
this  question  instinctively  takes.  In  the  hour 
that  I  ask  this  question,  I  join  hands  with  the 
true  and  noble  of  all  lands  and  ages.  In  the 
hour  that  we  ask  this  question  together,  we  are 
as  one  man  in  our  sympathy,  we  have  a  common 
worship. 


8o  JESUS   AND   THE   MEN   ABOUT   HIM 

We  wondered  how  Jesus  without  any  education, 
such  as  men  count  education,  could  have  printed 
his  name  on  the  most  civilized  nations  forever. 
One  of  his  marvellous  sentences  carries  his  se- 
cret. "If  thine  eye  be  single,"  he  says,  "thy 
whole  body  shall  be  full  of  light."  It  is  the 
quality  of  learning,  the  seeing  from  the  level  of 
the  hilltop,  that  makes  any  one  wise.  To  the 
single  eye  of  love,  mysteries  and  enigmas  are  dis- 
closed, the  lines  of  human  strife  are  straightened, 
the  simple  conditions  of  right  and  wrong  are 
made  clear.  Did  you  never  try  to  answer  your 
baffling  questions  with  this  quality  of  sight  ?  Did 
you  never  cease  to  ask,  What  is  expedient?  or 
What  is  wise  ?  and  ask  instead.  What  does  broth- 
erly love  bid  ?  or.  How  would  I  like  to  be  served  ? 

Finally,  what  gives  our  ordinary  lives  inspira- 
tion and  comfort  ?  Jesus'  vitalized  goodness,  we 
answer,  goes  by  contagion,  as  the  flame  kindles 
in  the  dry  fuel.  Like  the  old  story  of  the  beacon- 
fires  that  blazed  from  burning  Troy,  from  head- 
land to  headland  about  the  ^gean  Sea  carrying 
good  tidings  to  ten  thousand  homes,  so  the  fire 
of  the  Christ's  light  plays  and  kindles  from  cen- 
tury to  century  through  history  till  it  bursts  out 
in  a  million  homes.     When  do  we  see  one  soul 


JESUS  8l 

caught  by  this  flame,  when  does  one  thor- 
oughly pure  and  vitalized  life  touch  us  with  its 
warmth,  when  do  we  ever  draw  together  and 
take  for  an  hour  the  motion  of  the  spirit  of  God 
that  leaps  to  seize  us,  that  we  do  not  have  re- 
vealed what  it  would  be  to  give  our  lives  wholly 
up,  Christ-fashion,  to  the  beautiful  will  of  God? 
For  the  type  of  Jesus  is  the  coming  type  of  the 
true  man  everywhere, —  a  living,  vitalized  man,  a 
just,  friendly,  brotherly  man,  of  wide,  quick  sym- 
pathies, of  incandescent  faith  and  hope.  Take 
our  lives  then,  Spirit  of  the  living  God,  make 
them  thine  own  !  Show  us  what  is  Christ-like, 
we  will  try  to  do  it.  Show  us  the  visions  of  the 
kingdom  of  God,  we  will  live  to  make  them 
real.  We  commit  ourselves  to  thee,  to  be  taught 
and  to  obey. 


In  the  love  of  truth  and  in  the  spirit  of  fesus 
Christy  we  join  for  the  worship  of  God  and  the  ser- 
vice of  man.  

We  believe  in  one  God,  the  Father  eternal,  whose 
righteousness,  wisdom,  and  love  rule  the  worlds. 

We  believe  in  the  holy  spirit  of  cheerfulness, 
charity,  and  peace,  which  we  would  win  and  maintain. 

We  believe  in  truthfulness,  honesty  of  conduct,  in- 
tegrity of  character,  wise  and  generous  giving,  purity 
of  thought  and  life. 

We  believe  that  we  owe  our  lives  to  the  service  of 
our  kindred,  our  neighbors,  the  state,  and  mankind. 

We  believe  that  obedience  to  duty  is  the  way  of 
life,  and  no  one  can  do  wrong  and  not  suffer  harm. 

We  believe  that  no  real  harm  can  befall  the  right- 
eous in  life  or  death. 

We  believe  in  the  imitation  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  all 
God's  heroes,  teachers,  martyrs,  saints,  and  bene- 
factors. 

We  hold  to  the  brotherhood  of  those  who  love  and 
serve  man,  and  we  hope  for  the  Life  Everlasting. 


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